US Ad Market Looks Weaker Without Temporary Boosts, Deutsche Bank Says

01:13 PM EDT, 10/09/2026 (MT Newswires) -- The US advertising market is not as strong as revenue trends suggest, given temporary boosts from political spending and the World Cup, Deutsche Bank said on Friday. Overall advertising spending in the third quarter likely grew 9.8% year over year, accelerating from the 6.9% and 6.1% increases in the preceding two quarters, respectively, the investment firm said, citing data shared by "the head of an independent media planning, buying, and strategy agency" during a client conference call. That's the strongest growth quarter of the year for ad spending and may be the best quarter over at least the next 12 to 18 months amid softening consumer demand, Deutsche Bank analyst Bryan Kraft said. However, ads for one-time events accounted for a significant portion of the growth story, with political advertising seen contributing about 2.7 percentage points, Deutsche Bank analyst Benjamin Black said in a separate note following a call with "the head of a global full-service media agency." MT Newswires couldn't verify if Deutsche Bank spoke to the same expert for both notes. "Our biggest takeaway is that headline advertising growth remains healthy, although this expert suggested that underlying environment is somewhat softer than the reported numbers suggest given significant contributions from political advertising, the World Cup, and (artificial intelligence)-company customer acquisition spending," Black said. Without political spending, ad spend growth would have been at 7.1% in the third quarter and slowed to about 5% in the final three months of the year, Black said. "Political advertising should contribute roughly (three to four) percentage points of growth in (the second half), while the World Cup will have contributed approximately one point," Kraft said. "Excluding these factors, ad spending would be considerably weaker and closer to (low-single-digit) growth." Black said digital advertising continues to outpace traditional media as online ad spend growth in the third quarter accelerated by about 100 basis points versus the second quarter to reach a high-single-digit pace year over year. "Political advertising is a smaller contributor to digital than to the overall market, but spending is increasingly shifting toward (Connected TV) and YouTube," Black said. "The broader secular takeaway remains favorable for digital, particularly platforms where AI is improving targeting and advertising performance." Among the digital advertising platforms that Deutsche Bank tracks, Black said the media agency executive gave the "most favorable" feedback for Meta Platforms (META) and YouTube, which is owned by Alphabet's (GOOG, GOOGL) Google. Reddit (RDDT) "continues to post very strong growth," Black said. Price: 724.49, Change: +3.60, Percent Change: +0.50