July marked the fifth consecutive month of year-over-year total advertising growth, increasing 43.3%. Relative to pre-pandemic July 2019, the U.S. ad economy is up 15%, according to a MediaPost analysis of data from SMI’s U.S. Ad Market Tracker.
The trend of smaller ad categories outpacing the Top 10 categories in growth continues. Compared to July 2020, categories outside the Top 10 last month increased 73%. The Top 10 ad categories saw an increase of 31% year-over-year. Compared to 2019, Top 10 categories were up 13%, while categories outside the Top 10 categories increased 31%.
According to MediaPost’s analysis, smaller advertisers are “more elastic” than large ad categories in their response to economic and ad recessions.
In June, the U.S. ad economy grew 35.2%, compared to the same month a year ago, although it was only up 0.3% compared to June 2019.The May YOY increase was 50.3%. May’s rebound showed that agency-driven ad buys were back to where they were in May 2019.