Let’s see what this week’s numbers say about online advertising, shall we?

• After 11 months of US ad declines, Standard Media’s US Ad Market Tracker showed 2.5% growth in May, signaling a potential rebound. Even with mixed signals and uncertainties, there is at last a sign of hope, our analyst Paul Verna said on a recent episode of “Behind the Numbers.” According to eMarketer US total ad spend growth will decline to 3.8% in 2023 from 8% last year, according to our forecast, in part due to 2022 challenges that carried over, such as the effect security issues have had on social channels and the ongoing attrition of traditional media spending.
• Also on eMarketer, check out the forecast for Digital ad spending, which reads “it will increase by less than 10% for the first time in 14 years. We revised our forecast for 2023 down for a second time to $263.89 billion as hopes of an ad industry rebound have disappeared.” Social network ad spend is down—with one exception. Social will have the lowest growth rate of any digital ad spending category this year. Meta will be buoyed by Instagram, but Twitter’s ad revenues will continue to plummet while Snapchat stagnates. TikTok, however, remains a bright spot.
• Three in 4 CMOs are facing pressure to “do more with less,” according to a Gartner survey of CMOs, making their budget allocations more important than ever. With paid media receiving about one-quarter (25.6%) of budgets, the report reveals how this media spending is being allocated by customer journey stage.Across the 4 distinct stages of the journey, the first stage – Awareness – receives the largest share of the paid media budget, at 27.6%. Still, slightly more than half of budgets are being allocated to Consideration and Conversion. Specifically, about one-quarter (25.4%) of paid media budgets managed by marketing are being used to fund Consideration / Demand Generation, and another quarter (25.1%) are dedicated to Conversion to Sale. Finally, about one-fifth (21.3%) of the paid media budget goes to Loyalty and Advocacy.