U.S. advertising spending is expected to increase 7.8 percent this year to $138.4 billion, helped by political and Olympic advertising, as well as general economic improvement, market research firm TNS Media Intelligence/CMR said on Thursday.
The fastest growing sectors are expected to be Spanish language television, the Internet and local television advertising, said Steven Fredericks, the firm’s chief executive officer.
“We anticipate expenditures on the upcoming U.S. elections and summer Olympic games to strengthen the ad market in 2004,” he said in a statement.
It expects Spanish language advertising to jump 15.7 percent this year. Internet advertising is expected to rise 12.1 percent, while local television ad spending is expected to rise 10.8 percent. The slowest growing sectors will be outdoor advertising at 5 percent, syndication at 5.4 percent and newspaper advertising at 5.5 percent.
This year’s growth comes on top of 6.1 percent growth in 2003, which surpassed the firm’s earlier growth estimate of 4.3 percent.