TV and OOH ad spending has peaked

TV ad spending in the US reached its highest point ever in 2018, a year that featured the Winter Olympics and a midterm congressional election—except no one realized it was a peak at the time. Linear TV had been stagnating for several years, though in early March 2020, the combo of the Summer Olympics and a big presidential campaign season looked set to generate a record $72.00 billion in US TV ad spending that year.

The political ad spending did come, but nothing else about last year went as expected for TV, and spending on that media type declined by 12.5% year over year, rather than increasing by our pre-pandemic estimate of 2.0%. While TV ad spending will rise again this year, by 6.7%, we don’t expect it to reach 2018 levels ever again.

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