August 7, 2025  |  SIGN UP

Jim Cooper
DIGIDAY, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Today marks the beginning of President Trump's dramatic global tariff rollout and a check in with marketing execs that we published this morning shows that despite a lot of hand wringing in the marketing sector in first and second quarter, big brands are continuing to spend on media to hold their market share.

That said, major brands such as Adidas, Walmart and P&G have started to enact tariff-associated price hikes and some like Kimberly-Clarke, as we reported, are trimming their media spend compared to this time last year.

But here we are in August, the second month in Q3, which was supposed to be zero hour for the economic meltdown caused by tariffs, and no advertising recession is at hand. In fact, WPP Media still expects ad spend in the U.S. to grow 5.6% this year, well ahead of the country’s 2% GDP growth in the same period.

We’ll have to see what impact this latest, and far larger, tariff agenda has on the general economy, but at this point brand marketers are not cutting and running yet.

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