Advertising agencies are trimming more than their Christmas trees this holiday season.

This week, both Magna and GroupM released their ad spend forecasts for 2022 and 2023, each updating earlier expectations released in June.

• Magna predicts that global advertising revenue will grow to $833 billion in 2023, or about 5% year over year. It trimmed 1.5 percentage points from an earlier prediction in June due to “the deteriorating macroeconomic outlook,” the report said.
• GroupM shed a similar amount from its 2023 outlook, dropping its projection from 6.4% to 5.9% growth, or $856 billion (excluding US political advertising).
• In the near term, GroupM’s global ad spend expectations for 2022, excluding political ad spend in the US, have been cut from 8.4% to 6.5%, or about $808 billion. Magna anticipates revenue of about $795 billion.

“Pure-play” digital advertising will finally fall back down to earth, only growing 9.3% in 2022, down from its June prediction of 11.5%, GroupM said, accounting for 67% of the total industry spend. That’s about $541 billion. (For reference, last year it grew by 31.9%.)

Each agency cited growth in CTV and retail media as reasons for optimism. In fact, GroupM estimates that retail media will grow to $111 billion in 2022, up from $98 billion last year, or 13%. CTV is predicted to grow 17% to $20 billion this year.

What’s next? GroupM encouraged “cautious optimism” despite economic concerns, noting that “large declines appear limited to select channels in select markets,” specifically in some European countries, which are facing “steep energy cost increases and shortages” tied to the war in Ukraine. Meanwhile, Magna said we’re in a moment of “profound uncertainty in the global economy, due to well-known economic and geopolitical factors.” Cool.

Click here for the full story.—RB

Regular podcast listeners are likely all too familiar with hosts encouraging them to use a code or visit a site to purchase something from a sponsor.

Direct-response campaigns that rely on vanity URLs and the like are certainly popular in podcasting, but listeners will also find brand-awareness campaigns, especially from brands with big budgets around this time of year.

By the numbers: Podcast campaigns have skewed just slightly toward DR for the past few years: 52% of podcast ads were DR last year, while 46% were classified as brand awareness, according to IAB data.

• DR ads still dominate podcasting by a big margin, at least among a few hundred of the brands that run the most podcast ads, according to new data from podcast ad verification and attribution platform Podscribe.
• But there are indications that brand-awareness campaigns are becoming more prominent.

Brand awareness may be having a moment

Among the advertisers Podscribe tracks that ran the largest number of ads, about 17% have run brand-awareness ads over the past year, according to Amelia Coomber, Podscribe’s head of growth and product. Over the same time period in 2021, that number was lower, at about 12%.

Additionally, the biggest podcast ad spenders are currently skewing toward brand campaigns: Of the top 50 podcast advertisers Podscribe tracks based on amount spent (as opposed to number of ads found), 62% have run brand-awareness campaigns in the past six months, per Coomber.

Keep reading here.—AM

Future Social is a weekly newsletter on social media, content, and creators from Jack Appleby, a Morning Brew creator who’s worked in social media for 10 years at companies like Beats by Dre, Microsoft, and Twitch. Check out an excerpt from one of his pieces below, and sign up for Future Social here.

A brand threw me out of a plane.

In October, GoPro invited 42 creators to a four-day, all expenses-paid jaunt to Interlaken, Switzerland, for its GoPro Creator Summit, where its new flagship product was rolled out, the GoPro Hero 11 Black—a sleek cube camera that carries a punch.

The assignment? Well, there was no assignment, per se. Just a bunch of content creators/action-adventurers who are accustomed to making content while traveling the world and me, an overgrown writer who sprained an ankle walking up a curb last week.

The craziest part?

We didn’t have any content mandates from the brand.

No agreement that we’d post X number of times.

No required brand language. No approval process.

Let’s talk about why that’s such a brilliant way for brands to work with influencers.—JA

There are a lot of bad marketing tips out there. These aren’t those.

Remember when: Here’s what marketers can learn from the Netflix docuseries Pepsi, Where’s My Jet? about a disastrous ’90s marketing campaign.

Looking back: Keep up with YouTube trends by checking out the platform’s top creators and videos from the year.

Level up LinkedIn: Tips for improving your marketing strategy on the platform in 2023.

Not a fad: Shoppable ads are a growing custom—especially on TV, now that Apple’s privacy is prompting more advertisers to turn back to the tube. Read about this significant shift here. Sponsored by mntn.*

That’s a wrap: Call off your search for the perfect video tools. Vimeo’s got you covered. They’ll help you create award-worthy video content so your marketing can start scoring two thumbs up. Learn more here.*

^{*This is sponsored advertising content.}

Are you wondering what targeting innovations are coming to replace the third-party cookie? Check out this Marketing Brew report, which explores a new tool that would give publishers more control over how their audiences are bought and sold.

Read or listen to this insightful resource here.

Why do Hershey’s Kisses taste better in green and red foil?

Catch up on a few Marketing Brew stories you might have missed.

• Twitter is matching ad spend to boost revenue
• The FTC wraps up public comments on consumer-surveillance proposal
• The World Cup is in full swing—and so are its protesters