Yahoo Finance

A major ad industry forecaster has downgraded its U.S. growth projection for 2025 because of a lack of economic visibility and a decline in consumer confidence that it said could be a drag on marketing and advertising budgets in the short term. Magna, a research unit that is part of Interpublic Group’s IPG Mediabrands, said Wednesday that it expects U.S. ad sales to reach $397 billion this year, an increase of 4.3% from 2024 when factoring in cyclical events such as last year’s election season. The updated forecast, like the earlier one, anticipates a slowdown from U.S. advertising sales in 2024, which reached $380 billion and marked a 12.4% increase from the previous year, boosted by political campaigns and spending around the Olympics.