This Year Next Year: Global End-of-Year Forecast

This year will, in some ways, be remembered as more of a mild setback than an industry-changing economic catastrophe for the media business. Despite the grim realities of a global economy that will be the worst since the Great Depression, advertising weathered the storm relatively well and will end up at declining by "only" 5.8% on an underlying basis (excluding-U.S. political advertising). This is a much better expectation than our June forecast of an 11.9% decline for 2020, but still a sharp fall from 2019's 8.7% growth rate.