Welcome to Inside Ad Spend – SMI’s monthly look at what’s happening around the ad market, giving you key stats you need to know. This month, we look back at July 2017 and how the overall ad industry performed. If you missed our Q2 addition it’s not too late to check-it out here.

ACROSS THE AD INDUSTRY

The total advertising market was up +12% compared to July 2016. Much of this increase comes from strong gains in Digital, and a surge in Radio and Cable Sports. Radio saw a +22% YoY increase partially thanks to a 50% increase from Telecommunications, and a Auto +41% increase from the Auto industry. This is an area we’ll be watching closely as we head into the end of the year. Newspapers and Magazines continue to decline with -16% and -6% decline respectively.

THANKS TO SPORTS, CABLE TV WAS ON TOP IN JULY

Most of the growth in Cable stems from a nearly 30% increase in spend around sports programming. Changes to programming across the genre i.e. four more days of Wimbledon in July 2017 than in July 2016, the addition of the X Games to July (which aired in June in 2016) and a bump to ESPN’s sports based talk shows, all contributed to such a large surge.

DIGITAL ADVERTISING SPEND SEES RAMP UP

The Digital sector grew +19% in July 2017, putting any talk of a digital slow down on the backburner for now. Specifically, Social grew +34%, Search grew +21%, and Video grew +12%. The Video sector is split however, with Premium Video seeing more of the growth. For example, Hulu grew +37% in July while YouTube continues to struggle with confidence from larger brands, and saw a -15% decrease. TV Network-Digital also saw an increase with +11% more spend in July 2017, than in 2016.

For more on what happened across the ad industry in July 2017 check out our July Report or get in touch for a demo and additional sample data points.