Ad Market Posts Fifth Consecutive Monthly Gain.

The U.S. advertising economy continued to overcome uncertainty around higher gas prices and inflation overall to post another month of growth in May. Just released data from Guideline shows marketers increased their investment by 1% compared to a year earlier. While it was half the size of the growth rate in the previous month, the increase continues a patter seen through much of 2026. May’s growth marks five consecutive months of year-over-year increases in ad spending.

Advertisers continued to pour a larger share of their dollars into digital media. Guideline says digital ad spending was up 9% in May compared to a year earlier. Some of that likely came at the expense of digital media, however. The data shows traditional ad spending was softer in May, with spending down 21% year-to-year. The result was digital’s share of the ad market ticked higher by a point as it accounted for 77% of total U.S. ad spending in May.

Guideline reports ad spending among the top 10 product categories ticked higher by 3.5% in May. That compared to a 2.7% decline by all other product categories. It was the second month in a row that smaller categories posted weaker ad spending numbers, which may indicate the bigger brands are better positioned to weather any pullback in consumer spending in the current economic climate.

Even with higher gas prices and inflation, some radio groups have said they are seeing advertisers ramp up their spending in the second quarter. Townsquare Media CEO Bill Wilson told an investor conference last month that Q2 pacing was up compared to the first quarter of the year. “We expect that to continue into the back half of the year,” Wilson said.

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.

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