Guideline: February Ad Market Sees Strongest Monthly Growth In Over A Year.

The U.S. ad market roared forward in February, with spending climbing 11.5% from a year earlier according to Guideline. It was the biggest month-to-month increase in more than a year for the index. There was no shortage of drivers for the increases. Not only did the Super Bowl fall in February, but the Winter Olympics also helped to ramp up national advertiser spending.

While March data isn’t yet available, Chief Insights and Analytics Officer Sean Wright says on a Guideline podcast that it appears 2026 is off to a solid start.

“First quarter looks decent, and I think second quarter will probably chug away,” Wright says. “Maybe we’ll start to see some softness in Q2 and Q3, but it’s also going to be a masked by the World Cup.”

Because February’s big events were largely consumed on broadcast television, it meant that traditional media had big gains from a year ago. Guideline reports February spending on traditional media was up 10.6% year-to-year. But online media grew at an even faster pace, with spending on digital channels increasing 11.9% Even so, traditional media’s share of overall spending edged slightly higher in February, representing 31% of marketing dollars spent.

The big-ticket nature of February’s events resulted in double-digit growth for top 10 advertising categories, with spending among those segments of the ad market up 10% from a year earlier. But they didn’t have a lock on the growth, as ad categories beyond the top 10 increased spending by an even more robust 13% — a health sign for radio, which often gets more of its national ad dollars from smaller categories.

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.