Ad Spending In 2014: Still A Slow Go

If the U.S. media economy was measured on the growth of digital, cable and spot television alone in 2014, it would be a boffo year indeed, according to medialifemagazine.com.

But declines in print will once again offset big gains in those three categories and lead to limited growth in total ad spending in 2014, according to a trio of forecasts released today by London agency Zenith Optimedia, GroupM and U.S. agency Magna Global.

All three caution the general economy remains in recovery mode and that some advertisers are still holding back on spending.

Zenith predicts that U.S. ad spending will rise 3.5 percent next year, up slightly from a prediction of 3.4 percent in its previous forecast in September.

Magna foresees stronger growth, up 5.5 percent, owing largely to Olympic and midterm election spending. But that’s down from a prediction of 5.9 percent growth in September.

GroupM puts 2014 U.S. ad spending growth at 2.9 percent, the same as its most recent forecast in August.

All three project that spot television will see another huge windfall from political advertising, with the 2010 Supreme Court ruling that opened spending to special interest groups and businesses generating record numbers for the third straight election cycle.

Cable television will continue to pull ad dollars from broadcast, with the addition of more high-quality programming and the move of major sporting events from broadcast to cable.

But the biggest growth in ad spending will once again be seen in digital.

Magna predicts a 12.5 percent increase, 4 percentage points higher than the next-fastest-growing medium, television.

In other words, advertisers don’t want to waste their time on media where people are spending less time, and digital’s rise has come at the expense of print.

Newspaper advertising will dive down another 8 percent in 2014, Zenith predicts, while magazines will slide 2 percent.

Radio and out-of-home advertising, meanwhile, remain somewhere in between the rosy fortunes of digital and the dour predictions for print.

Radio will be up 1.9 percent next year while out of home will grow a solid 5 percent. Magna is less optimistic about radio, predicting a 0.4 percent decline, though it also sees out of home increasing by 4.8 percent.

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