global ad spending

Zenith and GroupM have lowered their expectations for global ad spending in 2017 and 2018, due to factors ranging from political uncertainty in the U.K. to slowing growth in China.

Zenith is the third agency to issue a downgrade in its ad spend forecast for 2017 in recent weeks. Sluggish economic growth is cited in the revisions.

n the heels of this week’s big agency forecast updates, ad market tracker and aggregator eMarketer released a new interactive guide to the global ad marketplace consensus. The U.S. has fallen to less than a third of the worldwide ad market, but represents a critical mass of digital media, especially mobile.

Magna Global lowers its 2014 outlook to a 5.1% bump in ad spending, down from earlier prediction of 6%. The problem: The second quarter was a little soft.

Marketers continue to gradually increase their global ad spending, as expenditures grew 3.5% in the second quarter of 2013 and 2.8% on a year-over-year basis for the January-June periods of 2013 and 2012, according to Nielsen’s quarterly Global AdView Pulse report.

Even though global ad spending has grown only moderately on a year-over-year basis, 2013 has proven to be a year to spend for select industries—and an off year for others. Industry and services was the fastest growing sector in the first quarter (up 8%), according to Nielsen’s quarterly Global AdView Pulse report. Meanwhile, financial services and automotive advertisers are spending less.

The global advertising market will continue to grow modestly at low single-digit increases through the end of the year — but will spike up to a 6% growth rate next year. Magna Global’s latest advertising forecast will get to $486 billion with 3% growth for 2013 — a slowdown from the 3.9% growth of a year ago. Still, the media agency group unit says the market will show double the growth levels next year — 6.1%, to reach $515 billion.

The prediction is down slightly from the 4.1% the agency forecast in December, but “mainly because 2012 turned out better than we expected, leaving tougher comparatives for 2013,” according to the report.

Advertisers gravitated to the small screen in 2012 and pulled away from newspapers and magazines, according to Nielsen’s quarterly Global AdView Pulse report. The $350 billion in global TV ad spending represented a 4.3% year-over-year increase, and a strong second half in North America contributed to a 3.2% rise in global ad spending for the year. Overall, TV ad spending accounted for 62.8% of global ad dollars in 2012.

2012 closed out on a positive note for the ad industry: globally, ad spend increased 3.2 percent year-over-year to $557 billion, according to Nielsen’s quarterly Global AdView Pulse report. A strong third quarter, which saw growth of 4.3% helped drive the annual uptick. Ad spend growth then receded to a more modest 2.5% in the fourth quarter.

This year is unlikely to go down as a banner one for the advertising industry. According to marketing intelligence company Warc, global ad spending (based on 12 major markets) will only increase 3% in 2013, down a full percentage point from the company’s forecast from November 2012.

Global advertising had a strong first nine months of 2012, with television advertising still holding the biggest share of advertising dollars and outperforming overall global growth. Nielsen says ad spending rose 3.3% from January to September last year, with TV advertising up 4.3% during the period.

Top forecasters said today they expect modest ad-spending growth over the next few years. Global ad spending will pick up a little steam in the future, according to Publicis Groupe’s ZenithOptimedia. Spending will climb from 4.1% growth in 2013 for a total of $518 billion to 5.6% growth in 2015, reaching $574 billion.

Warc forecasts growth of 4.4%, down from an earlier prediction of 5.3% in April. And Warc cut the forecast for the U.S. from 4.1% in April to 3.6%, reflecting concerns about the job and housing markets.

Despite the debt crisis in Europe, worldwide advertising continues to grow at a faster pace than U.S. advertising. Global ad spending increased by 3.1% during first quarter, according to Nielsen, compared to a 2.6% increase for the United States, based on Kantar Media figures. And forecasters are predicting that global spending will outpace the U.S. for the full year, despite the huge number of political ad dollars being spent stateside.

After a strong finish to 2011, global ad spending continued to rise in the beginning of 2012: up 3.1% compared to the same period last year.

Barclays has lowered its global ad spending forecasts for this year and next, the financial firm confirmed in a report to investors today. The financial firm now believes global spending will reach nearly $490 billion this year, up 3.5%, a downgrade from its January growth forecast of 4%. Next year, the firm believes growth will top out at 4%, a half percentage point lower than it had forecast earlier.

Despite overall growth of 5.7% for the advertising industry in 2Q 2011, ad spending fell in nearly half the world’s key markets in the second quarter of this year as economic concerns continued to impact the advertising industry, according to Nielsen’s quarterly Global AdView Pulse report.

Citing increasing economic uncertainty and a “reluctance from marketers to commit ad spend,” the Worldwide Advertising Research Center (WARC) today issued a “gloomier” revision to its ongoing tracking of ad industry forecasts. WARC’s new “consensus” estimate calls for worldwide ad spending to rise 4.4% this year, a downward revision of more than half a percentage point from the 5.1% rate of growth it estimated for 2011 in April.

With increasing jitters about the debt crises here and in Europe, and their impact on the world economy, another ad industry group has downgraded its prediction for global ad spending growth in 2011. London-based WARC now says global spending will climb just 3.2% versus the more optimistic 4.6% it had predicted just a few months ago.