Full-Year Ad Spending Surges 18% Vs. 2020, 9% Vs. 2019 (mediapost.com)
The U.S. ad market has fully recovered from the recession of 2020-21, with full calendar-year spending rising 18% vs. 2020, and 9% vs. 2019, according to a Standard Media Index analysis of the U.S. Ad Market Tracker, a collaboration with MediaPost indexing total U.S. ad spending from the pool of agency holding companies and independent agencies' actual media buys. A separate analysis of month-by-month data by MediaPost, however, reveals that the expansion has been decelerating through year-end 2021 (see related story). As robust as the recovery has been, SMI's analysis indicates it has been far from even across the major media.