The ad spending numbers for 2026 looked good until the war in the Middle East made them provisional.
Not because they were optimistic or vacuous about ad spending this year but because they were built on assumptions about a world that existed two weeks ago – one where the biggest variables were tariffs, AI and the schedule of marquee sporting events.
Madison and Wall’s latest update has made that tension visible: the firm raised its 2026 U.S. ad forecast from 6.6% to 8.1% (excluding political advertising) but noted that the economic assumptions underneath it were written before the conflict in the Middle East started.
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