MUMBAI: In what comes as a welcome news for the American advertising and television industry, leading media buying agency GroupM, has re-evaluated U.S. TV spending in 2016 to 3.4 percent growth from 2.3 per cent.

The reason for this raise, a new report from GroupM clarifies, is the influx of campaign money to the ad spends of local TV networks, as both the political parties get more aggressive prior to the country’s presidential election.

Along with that, there is a return to low single-digit growth in national TV, which is coming from some shifting in spending from digital in the consumer packaged goods category as well as continued spending growth from the heavy TV-centric pharmaceutical sector, GroupM said.

For 2017, GroupM expects TV growth to decline to 2.1 per cent as local TV cools off in a non-election year. The healthier TV market is also facilitating an increased advertising spending overall in the U.S. for 2016, which the agency estimates to be at 3.1 per cent, up from 2.7 per cent.

Digital investment will continue to grow at three times the rate of overall advertising spending but will be lower than the double-digit levels seen in recent years.

“The combination of global economic headwinds coupled with moderate domestic growth as well as continued procurement pressure to extract media efficiencies and cost savings will confine ad market potential to its current low-single digit growth levels,” the GroupM report stated.

When it comes to worldwide ad outlook for 2016, GroupM has reduced the earlier prediction of 4.5 to 4 per cent as China and Brazil markets cool down. India, though, remains the fastest-growing large economy in the world, increasing at a 14 percent to 15 per cent rate in 2016 and 2017.

For 2017, GroupM sees ad volume rising at 4.3 per cent to USD 552 billion and total marketing services topping USD 1 trillion for the first time.

To answer the several Brexit related nervous queries and fears within the industry, author of the forecast Adam Smith said, “At this time, there is no tangible evidence of a Brexit effect in macro indicators nor budgeting decisions. However, in the next six months to a year, it is likely companies will invest less. Job creation, wage growth and productivity will be lower than it otherwise might have been. This is a difference of degree, not magnitude.”

“There is no evidence of a Brexit-driven recession at the time of this writing, and though some have deferred 2016 advertising investments, worst-case we still see that U.K. advertising growth will reach 4.5 per cent this year, propelled exclusively by the growth of digital. Our base case remains 6.3 per cent, which we will revise as usual in November,” he added.

(source: broadcastingcable.com)