Harry Styles’ mega fame by the numbers, plus top 5 states for CTV political ad targeting: Datacenter Weekly
Also: Macroeconomic news in a nutshell, your guide to Ad Age Leading National Advertisers 2022, and more.
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A new ad industry record
“The U.S. advertising industry is on track to surpass $300 billion in total ad spending for the first time ever, according to a new forecast from Interpublic Group of Cos.’ Magna, which shows that nationwide ad revenues are poised to grow 9.8% year-over-year in 2022,” Ad Age’s Ethan Jakob Craft reports.
Essential context: “A driving force behind that performance is the trifecta of this year’s Winter Olympics, FIFA World Cup and U.S. midterm elections, which have collectively pumped billions of seasonal dollars into media owners’ coffers,” Craft adds. “Those events have also helped offset conditions that have caused many key verticals to scale down their marketing budgets in the second half of the year.”
Harry Styles’ mega fame by the numbers
• The Harry Styles vehicle “Don’t Worry Darling” is the No. 1 movie in U.S. theaters right now, and Styles is still on his massive “Love On Tour” concert tour in support of his second and third studio albums, “Fine Line” and “Harry’s House,” respectively. In fact, he’s playing the Moody Center in Austin, Texas, tonight, Sunday and Monday—the last three shows of a six-night residency there—then continues on to play six nights at the United Center in Chicago, followed by 15 nights (!) at the Kia Forum in Inglewood, California, before heading to Mexico.
• Per Enji Erdenekhuyag of NBC Chicago, tickets for Styles’ sold-out Chicago shows are ... not cheap for those turning to ticket reseller platforms. “According to StubHub, the artist’s Oct. 7 performance is the most expensive,” Erdenekhuyag reports, “with tickets starting at $350 in the upper section of the stadium and spilling over the $900 mark for closer seats that will provide unobstructed views of the stage.”
• In August and early September, it’s worth noting, Styles sold out 15 consecutive nights at New York’s Madison Square Garden—an accomplishment memorialized with a banner now permanently displayed inside the venue. “Styles joins just two other musical artists to have a banner in the Garden’s rafters, with Billy Joel and Phish both leaving their marks on the venue” previously, per Pollstar’s Ariel King.
• Styles now has 13.7 million subscribers on YouTube—up from 11.9 million in March, according to influencer marketing platform CreatorIQ, which keeps track of these things—and he’s racked up cumulative YouTube views of 4.7 billion as of this writing.
• In May alone, when “Harry’s House” dropped, Styles’ YouTube channel racked up 230 million views, per CreatorIQ.
• Styles now has 47.6 million followers on Instagram—a net gain of 3.2 million since March, per CreatorIQ.
• As of this writing, Styles’ song “As It Was” is No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100—its 15th week atop the chart.
Where political campaigns are targeting their ads with CTV
Via TV ad tech company Madhive, here’s some insight into where political advertising targeted to connected TV (CTV) is being deployed in the midterms. The top 5 states by share of CTV political advertising impressions year-to-date:
1. Wisconsin: 13%
2. Maryland: 8%
3. Pennsylvania: 8%
4. California: 7%
5. Michigan: 5%
Background: Madhive works with local network affiliates across the country, giving it access to data covering more than 100 million U.S. households.
Essential context: Swing state Wisconsin, No. 1 above, is seeing some rather astonishing overall campaign spending for a couple of its key races, per the latest Ad Age Campaign Ad Scorecard analysis. The Badger State places twice on our list of the 15 U.S. midterm races with the most media spending. Wisconsin’s U.S. Senate race has seen $134.4 million in combined campaign ad spending by Republicans and Democrats, while Wisconsin’s gubernatorial race has seen $73.5 million in combined ad spending by Republicans and Democrats. (Those tallies include TV, radio and tracked digital advertising from Dec. 28, 2021, through Election Day, as of Sept. 26, 2022.)
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Privacy sandbox. Seller-defined audiences (SDAs). Match rate. Conversions API (CAPI) ...
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Ad Age Datacenter is Kevin Brown, Bradley Johnson and Joy R. Lee.
This week’s newsletter was compiled and written by Simon Dumenco.
