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U.S. Ad Market Falls For 7th Consecutive Month in January

• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, Yesterday

The U.S. advertising marketplace fell for the seventh consecutive month in January, declining 5.8% from January 2022, according to the latest update from the U.S. Ad Market Tracker, a collaboration of Standard Media Index and MediaPost based on a pool of actual ad spending data from the 12 biggest agency groups, including both holding companies and major independents.

The decline reflects an extra tough comparison with January 2022, which was up 23.1% over January 2021, which was the lowest January since SMI began the index.

Compared with January 2021, January 2023 increased 15.0%.

The top 10 ad categories fell 4.1%, outperforming all other categories, which declined at more than twice that rate: -8.7%.

Interestingly, digital's share of U.S. ad spending fell to 52% in January, which appears to be the seasonally weakest month in terms of digital advertising share, following December, which appears to be the strongest month of the year for digital ad buys.