Brian Wieser

Domestic ad revenue in 2017 is on track to increase 4% to 5% in 2017, thanks to growth from internet-based companies, according to Pivotal Research Analyst Brian Wieser. A group of 10 large web firms, including Google, Amazon and Expedia, increased their spending on sales and marketing by a median growth rate of 24% in the most recent quarter, he said in a note to investors.

National TV advertising revenues were down 1% in the second quarter — an improvement from the 3% decline in the first quarter. Yet challenges remain. The estimates came from Brian Wieser, senior research analyst for Pivotal Research Group, and were based on recent second-quarter earnings results from major media companies. “The traditional medium is unlikely to return any time soon,” he writes.

Pivotal Research Group analyst Brian Wieser downgrades the entire publicly traded advertising sector in a note to clients today. “With reduced price targets, we continue to rate each of them ‘Hold,’” he says,.“challenges that became much more visible by the middle of last year are likely to compress expansion in years ahead vs. prior expectations.”

The shortfall against 2014 means that spending in the critical political ad category will also be off against 2012, the last presidential year and best comp, according to researcher Brian Wieser. As expected, the gains and losses in the category varied from group to group.

Commercial advertising loads per hour continued to rise in August — up 2.4% — with total TV commercial impressions up slightly at just under 1%. The average number of minutes per hour devoted to advertising grew to 10.9 from 10.6 in August 2015, according to Brian Wieser, senior research analyst at Pivotal Research Group.

As advertisers and agencies wrap up their 2016-17 upfront negotiations, they might want to consider an analysis released this morning by an influential Wall Street analyst reviewing changes in the U.S. audience reach of Nielsen-rated TV networks. While ratings continue to serve as the currency that are the basis of most TV advertising deals, big TV advertisers still use media plans that seek to optimize the reach of viewers in the TV universe.

National TV advertising for fourth-quarter 2015 has grown 2% according to Pivotal Research Group senior analyst Brian Wieser, who attributes this to many factors including new ad categories with high media spending from daily fantasy sports marketers as well as pent-up demand from budgets not allocated earlier in the year.

The U.S. advertising market is expected to maintain its modest low single-digit percentage growth rate over the near term — with the TV ad market gaining less. Brian Wieser, senior research analyst at Pivotal Research Group, estimates the growth rate of 2.5% will continue for the U.S. advertising market — excluding Olympic and political ad spending. The longer-term forecast is that the U.S. ad market will grow 3.1% on average through 2019.

Brian Wieser, a securities analyst at Pivotal Research Group, says the consensus on the upfront is that volume will be down by a few percentage points while pricing will increase by a few, but he cautions against using those numbers as a gauge of the health of the media companies. In this Q&A he also talks about excessive media concern about the shift of ad dollars to digital media, the need for big new ad categories, the pluses of programmatic buying and more.

TV is expected to be the next medium to adopt programmatic ad buying and that will be a boon to broadcasters, says Pivotal Research Group’s Brian Wieser. “There are going to be different advertisers who can make use of TV who otherwise wouldn’t have,” he says. “The ability to apply more data to the buy could make it possible to find new marketers looking to buy in a very different way.”

Perhaps it’s fitting that, during the same week the Interactive Advertising Bureau declared that online ad spending had outpaced broadcast for the first time during a full year, one of the top media economy forecasters began pondering the impact that new media will have on the upfront. Pivotal Research Group’s Brian Wieser talks about why programmatic may not work for the networks, when digital video spending will come of age, and how likely it is that C7 will be used this year.

Influential Wall Street analyst and former Madison Avenue insider Brian Wieser initiated coverage of media and marketing research giant Nielsen with a “hold” rating and a year-end stock price target of $31 per share, giving it an equity valuation comparable to leading ad agency holding companies.

The media economy is getting a nice infusion of dollars from political and Olympic spending that will carry through the end of the year. But that boost won’t extend much beyond then. Brian Wieser, senior research analyst at Pivotal Research Group, talks about the pace of the recovery, the outlook for print and the potential consequences of the fiscal cliff.

Pivotal Research Group’s Brian Wieser: “The death of TV has been predicted with regular frequency. One of the most detailed pronouncements was published last week by Henry Blodget’s Business Insider. While the article is certainly thoughtful and among the most detailed we have read on the topic, we fundamentally disagree with many of the article’s underlying data points and related conjecture. Thus, we also disagree with the conclusions.”

Pivotal Research Group’s Brian Wieser is forecasting that broadcast ad pricing in the upfronts this spring will rise 8% on the assumption that spending by the national marketers will be about the same as last year — $8.9 billion. That’s not only good for broadcasting; that’s good for cable, he says. The “tacit collusion” among the Big Four  insures that the anchor price of all upfront advertising remains high.