Magna: Digital continues to lead ad spend growth

Dive Brief:

The outlook for advertising continues to improve, as U.S. second-quarter ad spending grew 4.4% over the same period last year, according to a forecast Magna U.S. shared with Marketing Dive.
The better-than-expected results led the media agency to raise its full-year forecast to 5.2%, a full percentage point higher than previous forecasts. Digital channels such as search, social and digital video grew 8.7% in the second quarter, while traditional media channels declined 4.1%.
For 2024, Magna is raising its total advertising forecast to 5.6% from 5%, excluding cyclical factors such as political advertising. Digital will continue to lead ad sales, growing 9.8% in 2024, while traditional media will decline 2% excluding cyclical spending.

Dive Insight:

While any growth is positive, Magna’s latest report reinforces how digital media and traditional media are headed in two different directions. Pure-play digital media formats such as search, commerce, social and short-form video grew 8.7% year-over-year in the second quarter, more than making up for the 4.1% decline in traditional media, including television, radio, publishing, out-of-home and cinema.

Social media ad sales grew by nearly 12% in the second quarter (compared with 7% growth in Q1 2023), while short-form digital video grew to 7.5% from nearly zero in the first quarter of the year. Retail media activity helped search/commerce growth 9% in the second quarter, about where it was in the first quarter of the year.

On the other side of the equation, cross-platform national TV and audio ad sales were down 4%, while local TV declined 5% and publishing dropped 7%. The only traditional media to grow in the first half of the year was out-of-home, which grew 2.5% in the second quarter. While many traditional media owners saw growth through digital channels – including non-linear TV ad sales via AVOD, CTV and FAST — those effects are only “mitigating, not offsetting, the long-term decline of traditional linear formats,” according to Magna.

For the remainder of the year, Magna forecasts total ad spending will grow by 7% to 8% in the final two quarters, bringing full-year growth to 5.2% (up from 4.2%, from the company’s June 2023 guidance). Pure play digital companies will capture 68% of total ad spending in 2023, with the big three of Meta, Google and Amazon, accounting for 59% of the total ad spend. For those digital companies, Magna forecasts revenue will increase 9.6% for the year (up from 7.9%). However, ad revenues for traditional media owners will decline 3.6% (compared with the previous guidance of a 3.2% decline).

The trends toward digital channels will continue into 2024. Magna forecasts digital media owners’ revenues will increase 9.8%, while traditional media companies will experience a 2% decline (excluding cyclical events such as political spending and the summer Olympics). Including cyclical spending, the revenue forecast for traditional media owners will increase 4.3%. For the year, total growth will be in the 5% to 5.6% range, excluding cyclical spending, and increase 8% to $364 billion when including cyclical spending.

In the digital channels, growth will be led by search and retail media, which already accounts for 30% of search advertising sales. Search/commerce will grow 22% in 2023 and 17% in 2024. Total search will grow 9.8% in 2024 to $143 billion, Magna forecasts. Social and short-form video will grow 10.9% and 9.1%, respectively, in 2024.