
Tariffs are denting ad budgets (auto worst), Q2 guides likely cut; META/AMZN/MSFT still 10-15% downside.
Last week we published a global 1Q25 advertising research report.
Let's briefly recap the conclusions:
Ad categories related to tariffs have already directly experienced impact, including: automotive, cross-border e-commerce, and certain retail and consumer goods
New economy categories remain unaffected, including: gaming, internet services, and some e-commerce advertisers
Automotive has been impacted the most, explicitly mentioned by almost all Agencies we communicated with, not just in the US but even in conversations with European Agencies, where "spillover effects" on automotive advertising budgets were observed due to US tariffs
Brand budgets shifting to performance advertising
Smaller platform budgets migrating to larger platforms
Q1 2025 TikTok budgets shifting to META/GOOG, a trend likely to continue as the TikTok Ban remains unresolved
This is quite a pessimistic conclusion, suggesting that most advertising platforms, even if they didn't miss in Q1 2025, will likely lower their Q2 2025 guidance.
So we must ask ourselves: with stocks having fallen so much, is this already priced in?
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