A brighter outlook for the media economy

Boosted by an unexpectedly strong first half for national advertising, the media economy is picking up some steam. A new forecast from Pivotal Research Group raises the outlook for 2013 ad spending, following months of mixed news about the US economy.

Ad spending will grow at a rate of 1.8 percent this year, up from a projection of 1.4 percent in April. That’s also ahead of the 1.2 percent growth rate for 2012. National advertising has been spurred by growth in digital, which will increase by 19.2 percent this year, compared to an earlier forecast of 14.6 percent. Brian Wieser, senior research analyst at Pivotal, also sees a brighter outlook for national TV and cable for the full year, bumping up his forecast to growth of 3.1 percent for broadcast (up from 2.7 percent) and 5.5 percent for cable (up from 5.3 percent). Google’s display advertising and Facebook drove much of that growth. Wieser says Yahoo and AOL, among other premium publishers, are seeing less-impressive results this year.