Globally OOH to grow at 26% in 2022: GroupM Mid-Year Advertising Forecast

GroupM’s ‘This Year Next Year’ Mid-Year Forecast released this month states in the introductory note that “Coming off the lows of 2020 and the highs of 2021, the advertising market is settling into 2022, a year that’s seeing rising inflation, increased wages, mounting regulatory pressure on Big Tech and an overall effort by consumers and marketers to find their footing in a world that’s getting increasingly used to living with COVID-19.”

On Advertising Industry Growth, the report states: “we expect advertising to grow around the world by 8.4% in 2022, excluding the globally distorting effects of U.S. political advertising. This is slightly below our prior 9.7% forecast from December, a change driven primarily by deceleration in China, which is now forecast at 3.3% versus 10.2% in December of last year. One can interpret the data as slightly negative in direction on a relative basis, but only marginally so, as expected growth on an inflation-adjusted basis is still positive, and similar to what we saw in many years during the 2010s.”

On outdoor advertising, the report cites that this segment will continue to rebound “as it progresses toward prepandemic levels in most parts of the world.

“Early 2022 has been strong as audiences have returned, people spend more time enjoying life out of the home again and new movement patterns emerge. New brands, marketers in the travel category and advancements in datadriven targeting are helping drive growth, too.”

Referring to the economic challenges that present risks to the growth momentum, the GroupM report states that “Although we forecast a slight decline in outdoor advertising during 2022, this is entirely because of current weakness in China — formerly the world's largest OOH market. Excluding China, growth should amount to 14.3% this year as many markets have approached or are soon to exceed their pre-pandemic highs.”

“We forecast 26% growth for 2022, following on 2021’s 29% growth rate. Digital OOH inventory continues to represent the bulk of the business now, with 64% share at present. We expect outdoor to exceed its 2019 volumes by 2025, indicating that much of the growth we are seeing can still be characterized as recovery driven.”