Ad Market Grows Again Despite Economic Headwinds.

Higher gas prices may be pressuring consumers, but marketers still believe there are sales to be had. And that has had a positive impact on spending. U.S. advertising grew 1.9% in April compared to a year earlier, according to data from Guideline. It marks four consecutive months of year-over-year increases in ad spending.

Spending increases were concentrated among the biggest spenders during April. The data shows top ten ad category spending grew by a combined 4.6% from a year ago. But spending growth declined among smaller categories, slipping 1.5% in April compared to the prior year as some of those smaller marketers may not be as prepared to weather any pullback in consumer spending.

The fastest growth came in digital advertising. Guideline says it grew 10.9% during April, compared to a year earlier. Traditional ad spending was softer, however. It was down 19.4% year-to-year in one of the segment’s biggest declines in recent years. The result was digital’s share of the ad market ticked higher by two points as it accounted for 76% of total U.S. ad spending in April.

Guideline’s U.S. Ad Market Tracker is a composite monthly index from Standard Media Index, designed to provide a real-world measure of U.S. ad spending, based on actual invoiced media buys, including radio, from the major agencies and their clients. As such, it is mostly representative of spending by larger national advertisers.

The data is powered by SMI and covers radio, television, digital, print, and out-of-home media types. It is based on actual spending data from the SMI pool partners at major holding companies and large ad agencies, representing 95% of all U.S. national brand ad spending.

Guideline announced in May that it is expanding its platform to provide CPM benchmarks for locally geo-targeted digital audio and podcast buys across more than 60 of the top U.S. publishers. Guideline SQADCosts Local has been often-cited reference point for local broadcast pricing. The new digital extension — which is also adding CTV capabilities alongside digital audio — uses the same Average/Low/High benchmarking framework for audio streaming and podcasting.

See Guideline’s U.S. Ad Market Tracker HERE.