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US ad market grows 3.7% in 2017

January 24, 2018

Standard Media Index, the advertising intelligence firm, has published advertising revenue figures for the full 2017 calendar year.

“Heading into 2018, ad spend in National Television is trending positively while Digital’s growth continues to slow.” said Standard Media Index CEO James Fennessy.  “National Television declined in 2017, but that is almost entirely due to the Olympics in ‘16. We see national brand advertisers paying really high CPM’s for quality drama, and sports programming, despite falling audiences. This speaks to the power of TV to reach audiences with their brand message via a full screen experience with no fraud.”

Through the entirety of 2017, the advertising market grew +3.8 per cent. Digital led the growth with an +11.9 per cent increase. Cable TV dropped -2.4 per cent while Broadcast declined -3.9 per cent.  CBS, NBC, ABC, FOX, and ESPN were the top five networks, bringing in a combined 42.4 per cent of the television ad dollars in national. CBS declined -4.2 per cent YoY, mostly due to the loss of the Super Bowl. The latter went to FOX, which posted +14.2 per cent YoY growth. ABC dropped -2.3 per cent and NBC declined -15.5 per cent, which is entirely attributed to the impact of Olympics in 2016. Excluding the Olympics, NBC would have been +4 per cent for the year, and the overall National TV market would only have declined -1 per cent.

In 2017, across all platforms, News media saw +4.1 per cent more spend, Entertainment programmes were flat at -0.8 per cent, and Sports declined by -12.0 per cent. Excluding the Olympics, Sports declined -1.3 per cent YoY. On the other hand, despite the end of the election cycle last year, Cable News has continued to grow in 2017. FOX News increased by +11.2 per cent, CNN by +13.6 per cent and MSNBC by +17.8 per cent. Ad spend at the Big Three Cable Networks has grown YoY in 10 out of the 12 months of 2017.

With the only exception of Twitter (-11.8 per cent), all the major social network sites delivered growth in 2017. Facebook (including Instagram) posted +40.5 per cent growth in US ad revenue within the SMI Pool of agencies, with Snapchat closing the year at +51 per cent growth after tremendous growth in the first two quarters of the year and a marked deceleration in Q3 and Q4.

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