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

“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 on a metaverse then launched a Twitter clone called Threads, TikTok kept growing at breakneck speed, and Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Disney+ have all started adding advertising-subsidised tiers to their platforms.

“Advertising has always been a really important part of the economy. It was more surprising when you had [Netflix executives] Reed Hastings or Ted Sarandos saying, ‘We’ll never take advertising on Netflix’,” Mr Juhl said.

“How do you have such large valuable audiences and not open it up in a meaningful way to brands? [Now] there’s probably more inventory available than there’s been in a long time.”

The days of the massive, culture-defining 30- or 60-second ad spot are fading, Mr Juhl said, despite the drawcards of the Super Bowl and the Olympics. “But, largely, viewership on those has been on the decline for some time,” he said.

Likewise, the resurgence of advertising is happening while tech and media companies slash costs. That’s an inevitable correction, he said.

“There’s been so much stimulus put into the market, and there’s been so much growth post COVID, that there’s a natural time right now where I think a lot of companies are just [thinking], ‘Should we slow down?’ So I think that’s more of a natural cycle than sort of ‘Hey, let’s panic and run for the hills,’” Mr Juhl said.

“You have to look at that in the grand scheme of things. We’re still looking at a massive growth mountain over the last four years.”

The true impact of rapid interest rate rises is yet to be fully felt, he said. At some point, that will severely hit consumer spending. But Mr Juhl is upbeat about the future. Government interventions to rescue businesses like Silicon Valley Bank should give some confidence to the market.

“I wouldn’t underestimate governments changing positions quickly in face of all this uncertainty to provide security for those that have been over-extended,” he said. “What happened? They bailed them out. There’s reason to still be optimistic.”