Ad Market Sees Uptick, Digital Rises 11%, Radio Off 4%

The U.S. advertising market grew 3.8% in the second quarter of this year -- largely due to an 11% gain in digital media.

Standard Media Index says this followed a 2.8% increase in the first quarter.

National TV brought down the overall results. In the second quarter, national TV advertising revenue was virtually flat -- down 0.8%. This followed a weak 0.8% gain in the first quarter.

In the second quarter, SMI says cable networks declined 4%, with broadcast networks rising 4% -- increases that were mostly attributed to the airing of the final three games of the NCAA tournament in April on CBS. A year ago, those games aired on cable network TNT.

Although cable networks overall declined, cable news networks continued to score big results, report MediaPost.

Fox News Channel was up 11%, while CNN grew 21% and MSNBC jumped 40%. In addition, the big three broadcast networks climbed by 18%.

While broadcast network advertising revenues were up overall, this was not the case with prime time. The daypart was down 4% in the second quarter. Fox took the biggest hit, sinking 12.2% versus the second quarter of 2016. ABC slipped 3%; and CBS was down 6%. Only NBC grew -- with a 3% increase.

Digital media's 11% gain saw improvement from a relatively weaker 6% increase in the first quarter. Second-quarter results showed soaring 55% gains in its social-media category, with premium video (virtually all TV network-content) also strong, at 30% higher. In this video category, premium video site Hulu climbed 11%.

By way of comparison, non-premium video -- including YouTube and Facebook video advertising results -- sank an eye-opening 15%. Both Google’s YouTube and Facebook have had brand safety concerns, along with some measurement issues.

Magazine and newspapers showed more big declines -- down 16% and 20%, respectively. Radio was off 4%, and out-of-home lost 1%.