January 25, 2023
In the first month to reflect a year-over-year comparison with the beginning of the COVID-19-related ad recession, national ad spending expanded 22% in March vs. the same month last year.
The data, which is derived from Standard Media Index's core database representing 90% of U.S. national ad spending, is a significant …
Wouldn't -13 to +22 be a 35 point surge?
No James.
You can't simply add the digits and ignore the +/- signs.
Look at it this way. The article says:
1. "a 13% contraction in March 2020,"
2. "national ad spending expanded 22% in March vs. the same month last year." (when referring to the current year).
While we don't know the actual dollar amounts, let's use a base number of (say) ,000 'widgets' for March 2019. So:
- if March 2019 was 1000 widgets and March 2020 was down 13% that means that March 2020 was 870 widgets
- if March 2021 was up 22% on March 2020 then March 2021 was 1061.4 widgets.
- this means that March 2021 is up by 6.14% on March 2019
This means that in round terms the market is up around 6% over the two years. This hold whatever the actual March 2019 dollar figure was.
The 'surge' you refer to is +25% on 2020 and +6% on 2019.
I hope that clears things up.