SMI

In the latest sign that an economic rebound from the pandemic is in the works, the U.S. advertising market surged last month from the same COVID-battered period a year ago, according to national advertising revenue data released by ad data experts Standard Media Index.

According to SMI’s analysis, which is the industry standard for ad spend data, U.S. advertising revenues in April saw year-over-year gains of 52 percent. This marks the second consecutive month for U.S. ad market growth, as SMI’s cross-platform product, the U.S. Ad Market Tracker showed the U.S. advertising market in March also saw 24.7 percent gains from the same period a year prior.

In April 2020, by contrast, the U.S. ad market revealed a 35 percent decline in light of the economic havoc wreaked by the COVID-19 pandemic, a low-point that was followed by an additional 31 percent slide in May 2020.

Online advertising has driven much of this recent recovery, as U.S. digital ad spending was up 83 percent in April compared to April 2020. TV ad spending, meanwhile, increased 15 percent year-over-year. A recent report by the Interactive Advertising Bureau corroborates digital’s big gains, showing that online advertising in 2020’s fourth-quarter surged 29 percent from the same period in 2019 and accounts for the highest quarterly revenues on record for digital advertising in 20 years.

Despite these recent gains, however, SMI’s data shows that total U.S. ad spends remain 7.4 percent lower than what they were in April 2019.

Data represented in SMI’s Ad Market Tracker is derived from U.S. ad agency spending, which represents more than 90 percent of all U.S. advertiser investment.