Wieser Upgrades 2024 For Fourth Time, Political Will Be 'Massive'

• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, 9 hours ago

For the fourth time in four consecutive quarters, ad industry economist Brian Wieser has revise his forecast for U.S. ad spending this year upward.

Wieser now projects U.S. ad spending will rise 6.3% this year, a two percentage point increase from his September 2023 benchmark of +4.3%.

Wieser's estimates exclude the impact of political ad spending, which is expected to be a record incremental amount for U.S. media leading up to the 2024 presidential election.

"Excluding political advertising, I estimate that the U.S. ad market grew by 10.1% during the first quarter of 2024, aided in part by the easy comparable of first quarter 2023's 1.2% growth rate," Wieser writes in today's edition of his Madison and Wall newsletter, adding, "This was similar to the fourth quarter of 2023's 11.1% pace of expansion, which also benefitted from the easy comparable of the fourth quarter of 2022, when the ad market only grew by 0.2%."

Separately, Wieser writes that 2024 U.S. political ad spending "will still be massive: at the present time I forecast that total political and issue advertising will amount to $15.1 billion for the full year, up from $12.6 billion in 2022 and $14.1 billion in 2020.

"Combined with spending on non-political activity, total advertising in the United States will amount to $394 billion this year.