Although inflation, a strong job market, and a positive economic outlook are at play, three dominant ad channels are contributing to upward US ad spend. From the resonance of retail media networks to the resurgence of social ad spend and burgeoning subscription over-the-top (sub OTT) platforms, the impact of these channels is being felt in the overall ad market.
October saw a 3.2% YoY growth for the US ad market, according to the Standard Media Index ad market tracker. This marked the fourth consecutive month of spending increases—a sharp turn from a prolonged period of negative monthly growth that persisted for about a year until July.
“Amazon, Walmart, Target, and Kroger … everyone across this entire booming retail media space is posting incredibly strong advertising numbers. That is really driving so much of the incremental growth across our digital ad spend forecast,” our analyst Peter Newman said on an episode of the “Behind the Numbers: The Daily” podcast.
“Meta is really by far the largest part of [social’s ad growth], but not only that, we’re seeing growth for Snap, Reddit, and, of course, TikTok. Everyone wants to be getting their ads there,” Newman said.
Ad-supported sub OTT tiers entered the streaming scene just in time for cost-conscious consumers to take advantage. “Netflix is opening up completely uncharted space for advertising where it hadn’t been before, and Disney is doing very similar things. You’re seeing huge amounts of people joining the Disney bundle or converting their Disney subscriptions into the ad-supported version,” Newman said.
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