Election Impact on Advertising, Google, Meta, Comcast, Microsoft and Other 3Q24 Ad Trends, Marketer Commentary From Adidas, Mondelez, Pfizer and More
Madison & Wall: Saturday Summary for Nov. 2, 2024
Each week on the M&W Podcast, we discuss Madison & Wall’s latest research and walk listeners through how the advertising business really works. Episode 9 of the Madison & Wall M&W Podcast is now available on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Weekly Work
Over several notes here, here, here and here we reviewed 3Q24 results from many of the world’s largest advertisers, including Alphabet, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft and Comcast. Looking at them and dozens of others who provided new data over the last week we can see that digital advertising probably grew by double digits during the third quarter while television probably declined on an underlying basis. Overall it seems very likely that advertising was up by high single digits on an underlying basis during the quarter.
This was supported by more commentary we reviewed from large marketers, such as Adidas, Mondelez, Pfizer and more, who generally conveyed ongoing increases in spending.
We provided an extensive review of the consequences on advertising-supported industries from outcomes that will follow from the US federal election, held next week.
We interviewed the CEO of Adelaide, Marc Guldimann about his history, his business and the broader topic of attention in advertising. The full interview is available to everyone here.
Additional Context
In assessing the changes that may or may not occur to the US advertising industry and companies based in the US following the eventual resolution of the upcoming election, we considered and wrote about the following issues:
The overall advertising environment
The consequences of a shift from a primarily rules-based political environment to a transaction-based political environment
FTC and antitrust issues, including the M&A environment and Google’s court cases
Broadcast station licensing and changes to existing processes
Social media, especially including what happens to TikTok, but also including X and Truth Social
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act and privacy regulations
Changes to talent availability, including the knock-on effects of changes to immigration policies or its enforcement and changes to reproductive freedoms
Although there are certainly some uncertainties around what would happen in some policy areas under a Harris administration, it would likely be a mostly status-quo situation which would leave our expectations for the advertising industry as generally unchanged. By contrast, there would undoubtedly be more change and policy uncertainty in the event of a Trump win. Of course, the degree to which Congress is aligned with the Presidency or not will have a significant influence on either outcome, too.
Additional analysis of the research is contained here.
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