Welcome to Ad Age Datacenter Weekly, our data-obsessed newsletter for marketing and media professionals.
How big retailers are investing in streaming TV advertising
U.S. ad spending is still growing—but the growth is slowing
“U.S. ad spending is expected to grow 7.2% to $381 billion in 2024, excluding political ad spending, according to industry analyst Brian Wieser of consultancy Madison and Wall,” Ad Age’s Parker Herren reports.
More details: “That is an increase from Wieser’s prior predictions that the U.S. ad market would grow 6.3% during the year. Including political spending, U.S. advertising is expected to grow 10.5% to $397 billion.”
Essential context: “The more optimistic forecast comes after stronger-than-expected 9.6% growth during the second quarter, excluding political spending, according to Wieser, who had previously estimated 6.7% growth. This marks three consecutive quarters of growth near 10%. Wieser, however, predicts the pace of growth will decelerate in the second half of 2024.”
Macroeconomic news and data in a nutshell
• “Low US weekly jobless claims assuage fears of labor market deterioration,” Reuters reports
• “Job openings data points to cooling job market,” per Axios
• “Food inflation: As grocery prices continue to soar, see which states, cities have it worse,” from USA Today
• “Mortgage refinance demand is 94% higher than a year ago, as interest rates fall again,” CNBC reports
Also see: Layoffs and budget cuts—tracking economic moves and news
How retailers are investing in streaming TV advertising
TV measurement company iSpot.tv is out with a new report that gauges how retail chains are investing in streaming TV advertising. Some key takeaways:
• Walmart is listed as the top U.S. department store streaming advertiser as measured by streaming-ad share of voice (SOV) among all department stores tracked by iSpot. It had nearly a quarter (24.65%) SOV in Q2 2024, though that’s down a bit from Q2 2023 (29.14%).
• Target is investing heavily in streaming advertising. It had 18.01% SOV in Q2 2024, up from 10.94% SOV in Q2 2023.
• In Q2 2024, Kohl’s had 14.26% streaming-ad SOV and Macy’s had 13.54% (both dipped a bit compared to Q2 2023) while JCPenney had 5.59% (up from 2.46% in Q2 2023).
The troubling errors an Ad Age editor at large discovered in the data that marketers have on him
“I don’t own an SUV, a Mercedes or a million-dollar home. I’m not 86. I don’t speak Spanish fluently and I’m not planning on having a colonoscopy anytime soon—despite what some data broker records say,” Ad Age’s Jack Neff writes in a story titled “I took a data journey—here are the disturbing things I found.”
The details: “Ad Age set out to find if information data brokers including Acxiom, Epsilon and Experian collect and share with marketers is actually worth the money,” Neff notes. “It turns out a lot of the data marketers receive from such data brokers is completely inaccurate, and when it’s not, it raises questions about whether brokers should be storing it.”
Essential context: “Over the course of six months, using what are called data subject requests (DSRs) from brokers,” Neff adds, “I collected the stockpiles of data and related classifications they’ve obtained on me. Such records are available under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), and not every broker will share them for people, like me, who live elsewhere (Ohio). But to their credit, some did.”
Keep reading here.
Just briefly
• “Ireland’s privacy watchdog ends legal fight with X over data use for AI after it agrees to permanent limits,” TechCrunch reports
• “Consumer data privacy laws: What retailers need to know,” from Chain Store Age
• “A New Group Is Trying to Make AI Data Licensing Ethical,” per Wired
• “Hospitals’ legal win shows HIPAA’s limits in shielding patient data,” from Axios
The newsletter is brought to you by Ad Age Datacenter, the industry’s most authoritative source of competitive intel and home to the Ad Age Leading National Advertisers, the Ad Age Agency Report: World’s Biggest Agency Companies and other exclusive data-driven reports. Access or subscribe to Ad Age Datacenter at AdAge.com/Datacenter.
Ad Age Datacenter is Bradley Johnson and Joy R. Lee.