In First Year-Over-Year Pandemic Comp, U.S. Ad Spending Surges 22% In March

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 …

2 comments about "In First Year-Over-Year Pandemic Comp, U.S. Ad Spending Surges 22% In March".
Check to receive email when comments are posted.
  1. Jim Brouwer from Krell Lab, LLC, April 16, 2021 at 10 a.m.

    Wouldn't -13 to +22 be a 35 point surge?

  2. John Grono from GAP Research, April 16, 2021 at 7:18 p.m.

    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.

Next story loading loading..
SPONSOR CONTENT

Discover Our Publications