U.S. Ad Spending Grows Again, With Traditional Media Gaining Share.

The U.S. ad market is nine for nine when it comes to posting monthly growth. Guideline’s U.S. Ad Market Tracker recorded a ninth consecutive month of growth in September. The firm says total spending rose 1.3% compared to a year earlier. That is slightly stronger growth that was recorded in August. Both months’ growth trails the gains seen in June and July when the World Cup marketing push helped deliver double-digit gains. The smaller growth is likely due in part to some of those ad dollars being pulled forward.

Guideline doesn’t release radio-specific data. But in the push and pull between digital and traditional media, September saw traditional media claw back some share. Among the dollars spent, 26% went to traditional media outlets — which was a six-point increase month-to-month. Even so, digital still accounts for roughly three of every four dollars spent by advertisers.

Guideline reports that ad spending among the top 10 product categories was essentially flat in September compared to year earlier. But among the other product categories spending climbed 3% year-to-year.

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.

Guideline this week announced several updates this week that will be rolling out in the fourth quarter. That includes giving users the ability to better analyze programmatic spending to tracking spending and pricing via direct sales, programmatic direct, and third-party platforms.

Quick Serve Restaurants, the second-largest U.S. product subcategory at $4.5 billion a year, is also getting divided up by product subcategory, splitting it into Burgers, Chicken and Other Quick Serve Restaurants. Pizza Eateries & Delivery remains its own separate subcategory. There are also new tools to isolate retail media spending in Canada, similar to what users can see in the U.S.

Clients can also now ask Guideline's AI Agent, in natural language, what digital ads cost by publisher, ad type or programmatic marketplace and see both pricing and spend in a single response. They can also build custom dashboards and use advanced charting to modify dimensions, measures, filters and custom formulas beyond standard dashboard views.

"Clients want our data to fit the way they already work," Chief Product Officer Steve Silvers says. "This quarter’s enhancements do that two ways. They put our pricing data wherever clients ask questions, and they organize spend the way the market actually buys."

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