• by Wayne Friedman , February 23, 2017

In January, digital media advertising growth continued its slowdown to single-digit percentage gains -- off from its big double-digit hikes in previous periods.

Standard Media Index says that for the second month in a row, digital advertising spend had modest growth: For January this was 6.3%, well off the 15% to 20% growth for most of 2016.

Bright spots for digital came in the categories that are increasingly competitive to traditional TV. Digital video advertising on pure-play platforms rose 33%, while social media ad spending had nearly the same growth, at 29.5%. Pure play internet radio was next at 17.7%.

Digital categories with a mediocre performance include search advertising, which grew only 2.9%; content advertising, which slipped 0.8%; ad network/ad exchange, which improved 3.3%; and mobile ad network/ad exchanges, which were down 2.2%.

Overall TV networks’ digital advertising revenue declined to 2.9%

But traditional TV advertising continued to have strong results -- confirming, in part, what senior TV network executives have said about a healthy scatter market. In January, network TV grew 5.7% -- cable networks climbed 8.2%; with broadcast networks up by around half that amount -- 2.8%.

Much of the national broadcast TV spending results came from sports programming. Taking out those results yielded just a 0.2% hike; with cable still up 7.5%.

Total TV -- including local TV spot and syndication -- was up 3.5%.

All TV ad spend comes from SMI AccuTV -- a new product that combines 70% of total national agency spend exclusively, with data model for the remaining 30%.

Print media continued to face challenges with magazines virtually flat -- down 0.1% -- and newspapers sinking 25.5%.

But radio climbed 3.9%, while out-of-home scored the best results for traditional media -- with a 9.7% improvement. SMI says billboard advertising grew 29% in January.