Media’s $100b man says the ad market has room to grow

afr.com:

Christian Juhl sits atop a $100 billion-a-year budget and is one of the world’s most powerful media executives.

As the global boss of GroupM, the biggest advertising buying group in the world, he oversees the combined spending power for thousands of brands, including Ford, Colgate-Palmolive, Google, Nestlé, Unilever, Mars and Coca-Cola.

GroupM uses that scale to buy media space and sell it back to its clients. Each year, according to the best independent estimates, GroupM spends almost $US64 billion ($101 billion) of its clients’ money on ads.

Christian Juhl, global CEO of GroupM, the largest media investment organisation in the world.  Dominic Lorrimer

At that level, a media executive can talk in sweeping, market-wide statements. Wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, clear inflationary pressures, an unsteady future for commercial real estate, and higher interest rates will have tremendous impact on advertising and media markets. It just hasn’t been fully felt yet, Mr Juhl said.

Locally, the ad industry accounts for $53 billion, or 2.1 per cent of GDP, new research released on Friday found. GroupM predicted advertising revenue – how much the world’s advertisers spend – will grow 5.9 per cent in 2023 and 6 per cent in 2024.

“I certainly see all of those unknowns out there, that makes you careful about the future,” Mr Juhl said.

“But generally, I think it’s been a pretty resilient marketplace. We’ve still been able to provide growth for our clients during that time period. I’m still cautiously optimistic we can find ways of growth through this.”

Advertising is going through a resurgence, he said. Rolling lockdowns and forced isolation during COVID-19 drove huge adoption of digital channels. Meta burned billions of dollars