Advertising has reached peak self-delusion
“Fantastic to see the evolution of the AA/WARC Expenditure Report and such positive projections for our industry.”
That was the laudatory view of the UK’s trade association for ad agencies, the IPA, after the latest Advertising Association/WARC Expenditure Report revealed UK adspend had grown by 6.4% to £46.7bn last year.
It certainly seems “fantastic”, doesn’t it? Then, why, as I asked in my Media Leadercolumn yesterday, are most people in advertising so gloomy these days? Wasn’t it only three months ago that we were being told there is a market “exodus”, with jobs being disappeared amid the AI automation revolution?
Or maybe this idea of adspend ‘growth’ is “fantastic” in the more literal sense. Namely: it’s becoming a polite fiction to mask what’s really happening.
Indeed the stories that matter in recent days come from the most obvious of sources: Big Tech companies’ latest earnings results.
Alphabet: 22% year-on-year revenue growth in Q1 to $109.9bn.
Meta: 33% year-on-year revenue growth to $56.3bn.
Amazon (advertising business): grew 24% year on year to $17.2bn.
I used to religiously cover these earnings nearly a decade ago as a tech editor for Campaign, and I still ask myself the same question today as I did then: “How can these already huge companies still grow so quickly?”
