Early Warning Services’ Zelle disclosed double-digit year-over-year (YoY) growth across critical segments during the first half of 2025, per a press release. With P2P’s absence in Zelle’s volume increase list, the platform holds firm hold on essential payments, but seemingly has failed to disrupt established use patterns among users who still differentiate between smaller transactions—Venmoing a friend back for coffee—and large, major payments, such as Zelle-ing a landlord monthly rent.

Gen Zers are putting their careers and financial health above family, community, and love, according to a recent NBC poll. These results give financial institutions perspective around these younger consumers’ primary goals. They also highlight the importance of assessing and understanding the needs of individual customers. Some Gen Zers have already bought homes and started families but likely want to further improve their financial health and status. This points to the importance of life-stages banking, including personalizing recommendations for each individual customer. Most Gen Zers want products that help them set money aside and make it work harder for them.

On today’s podcast episode, we discuss what we expect from consumer spending in Q2, the three scenarios we expect for total media (and digital) ad spending, and how marketers are reacting to everything. Join Senior Director of Podcasts and host Marcus Johnson, Principal Forecasting Writer Ethan Cramer-Flood, and Senior Forecasting Analyst Zach Goldner. Listen everywhere and watch on YouTube and Spotify.

68% of US internet users think marketing from national brands with local messaging makes ads more relevant and shows advertisers are investing in local communities, per a study from The Harris Poll and Locality.

Over 80% of ad spending in the US for technology and electronics (87.1%), retail (82.9%), and consumer packaged goods (80.2%) is directed toward digital media, according to EMARKETER’s August 2024 forecast.

US travel industry digital ad spend will grow by 8.9% this year and 7.9% next year, per our forecast, representing a slow down after years of double-digit growth.

The majority (77.7%) of ad spend in the US is digital. Retail dwarfs all categories in terms of sheer size, but its position as a growth driver falls this year as telecom takes the top place.

50% of adult US mobile gamers spend between $1 and $50 per year on mobile games, according to an April 2024 CivicScience survey.

Last year, Adalytics reported that Google misplaced 80% of video ads. Google contested the report, but concerns about ads showing up in places advertisers don’t want them to persist.

On today's podcast episode, we discuss how much time folks are spending with TVs and CTVs, how many ad dollars are going to both, and which of the streaming platforms will make the most from ads going forward. Tune in to the discussion with our analyst Ross Benes.

With its shift to digital, political advertising is increasingly programmatic. US digital political ad spend will grow by 156.3% this year over 2020, the last presidential election year. That growth outpaces the 28.7% growth overall US political ad spend will see, as noted in our US Political Ad Spending Forecast 2024 report.

Marketers need a vertical video ad strategy for YouTube Shorts to reach the 164.5 million US viewers that will use the platform this year, per our forecast. Much of what works on TikTok will work on Shorts because the platforms are so similar. But because a lot of YouTube creators are used to longform, they may need some guidance. Here are some of YouTube’s own best practices for Shorts ads from its ABCDs of effective video ads guide.

Political ad spend will hit $12.32 billion this year, according to our December 2023 forecast. That’s nearly three times what it was in 2016.

Digital ad spend is growing and going increasingly toward programmatic formats. Search ad spend is on the rise as well, as retail media growth remains healthy. And social media is in better shape than previously projected. Here are five recent charts forecasting the future of ad spend.

On today's podcast episode, we discuss what the biggest trend of 2024 will be when it comes to how consumers will spend their time—and money—and what the biggest opportunities for advertisers will be as a result. Tune in to the discussion with our director of Briefings Jeremy Goldman and vice president of Briefings Jennifer Pearson.

Although inflation, a strong job market, and a positive economic outlook are at play, three dominant ad channels are contributing to upward US ad spend. October saw a 3.2% YoY growth for the US ad market, marking the fourth consecutive month of spending increases, according to the Standard Media Index ad market tracker.

With the rise of digital ad channels like connected TV and retail media, there’s a lot of emphasis on making every ad and consumer touchpoint shoppable. Ad formats with direct calls to action help drive conversions and increase ROI. But brand equity can get left out of the conversation when we focus on performance marketing in isolation. Every ad should perform and provide some sort of measurable impact, but each ad is also vital for telling a brand’s story, even at the bottom of the funnel where marketers are more focused on driving conversions.

Travel will see the fastest growth in US digital ad spending of any industry in 2023, according to our forecast. Travel, retail, healthcare and pharma, automotive, and entertainment will outpace the national digital ad spending growth rate.

US TV ad spend will fall 8% this year, per our forecast. Its share of total media ad spend is also in decline as marketers turn to faster-growing formats such as connected TV (CTV) and retail media.

After 11 months of US ad declines, Standard Media's US Ad Market Tracker showed 2.5% growth in May, signaling a potential rebound. Even with mixed signals and uncertainties, there is at last a sign of hope, our analyst Paul Verna said on a recent episode of “Behind the Numbers.”