I was wondering if anyone knows of any long term data (several decades) on how much of the US economy is advertising. I was thinking as a percentage of GDP.
I am wondering if the newer tech companies that have mostly advertising revenue (like Meta or Google) have increased the whole size of the advertising market, or if their revenue is mostly capturing market share (in the advertising market) from the previous companies (television networks, television broadcasters, newpapers, magazines, etc.)
It certainly feels like we are absolutely drowning in advertising, and that isn’t counting the adverts that the media tries to pass off as “news”, or product placements in the programs. (remember when McGarrett would radio he is being followed by a “green sedan”? Now, an ep of “Burn Notice” will include narration saying “you can do extreme maneuvers like this when you have a really powerful car” while the camera focuses on the Hyundai nameplate)
There used to be a limit to how much advertising there could be per hour of prime time TV programming. That rule was repealed in the 80s. Hour long TV shows before the “reform” were 50 minutes long. Now, a prime time dramatic show is only about 43 minutes.
The second half of the evening “news” on ABC is almost unwatchable. After the top “BREAKING NEWS”, the second 15 minutes is a sequence of 3 minutes of advertising, 30 seconds of content, another 3 minutes of adverts, 30 seconds of content, another 3 minutes of adverts, and so on, to run out the clock.
Of course, the question that relates to your portion of GDP question is, what is the ad revenue? There is clearly much more advertising being broadcast, but has the abundance of available ad time resulted in lower advert rates? (good for advertisers, bad for we poor sods who have to sit through that nonsense.)
I was wondering if anyone knows of any long term data (several decades) on how much of the US economy is advertising. I was thinking as a percentage of GDP.