COMMENTARY

Is Social Now the Largest Ad Channel -- Depends on Who You Talk To

• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, 3 hours ago

I miss the days when McCann-Erickson’s Bob Coen was the default – if not the sole – ad industry bean-counter. It made life easier for an advertising trade journalist trying to understand -- and bucket -- shares of ad spending by medium.

While I didn’t always agree with the late Coen’s categorizations, at least they were an industry standard for benchmarking the ebb and flow of ad demand by medium.

Fast-forward to today, and four of the major holding companies -- Dentsu, Publicis’ Zenith, WPP’s GroupM, and Coen’s descendants at IPG Mediabrands’ Magna -- each have their own way of categorizing and calculating things.

Then add in a variety of third parties ranging from financial-sector analysts, to pure-play ad industry researchers like PQ Media, Brian Wieser’s Madison and Wall and Ascential plc’s WARC, and you’ve got quite a varied mix of apples and oranges.

That's one of the reasons MediaPost periodically publishes an industry composite of Madison Avenue's Big 4 forecasting units based on percent changes, but not absolute totals by medium.

Because, well, there is no consensus on many of the medium line items calculated in their totals.

I mean, what else can an ad-trade journalist -- much less a practicing media planner or buyer -- do? Well, if you receive a press release, as I did this morning, touting the headline above, you have to drill down into it.

"Social media is now the largest channel worldwide by advertising investment, forecast to reach $247.3 billion in 2024," read the subject line of the press release I received this morning from WARC touting the tipping point.

That WARC release, ironically seems to contradict one sent exactly one year ago touting that search, not social, was the largest ad channel -- by about $100 billion over social -- in the global media mix (see below).