The U.S. ad market rose just 0.1% in September vs. the same month a year ago, but it nonetheless marked the third consecutive monthly gain, following a protracted period of sequential declines. While not necessarily great news amid growing concerns that the macro economy remains uncertain, including speculation over another U.S. and possibly global recession, it's not terrible news either. And while this September was down 2.0% from September 2021, that year was the best September ever since Guideline began tracking the U.S. advertising marketplace.

Disrupt. Delight. Drive. Three words that, together, form a mandate for our catalogs. From crowded mailboxes our books need to stand out and garner attention; pay off that attention with content that creates desire, and – ultimately – compel our customers to click, call or visit. It’s a tall order. And that first piece, Disrupt, is the 1st priority. If it doesn’t happen, the other two won’t. We could mail an 11” x 17” oversized book. That will get noticed. So would a ‘scratch and sniff’ cover? But most of us don’t have budget to add a bunch of bells and whistles just to make us louder than the other guys. I’m particularly mindful of this as I wade through the current flood of women’s clothing catalogs in my own mailbox, most of them conveying the long-suffering mashup: covers graced with women pouring each other glasses of Rosé, or bikes with flower-filled baskets. Make no mistake: this is not a judgement, but a shared burden.

Months after rolling out a carbon calculator to estimate and influence the carbon impact of digital media buys, GroupM this morning unveiled a new version capable of measuring the carbon footprint of its client's media buys across various media -- both digital and analog. The new "Channel-Level Carbon Calculator" was developed in partnership with carbon impact researcher Scope3, and GroupM currently is working with it to engineer a new media-planning API (applications protocol interface) that any agency or advertiser will be able to integrate into their media-processing tech stack to seamlessly ingest Scope3's data in order to adjust their media mix or specific suppliers that do a better job of complying with their goals of reducing carbon emissions in their advertising and media buys. While GroupM will have a "first-to-market" access to the API for a period of time, the WPP unit said the plan is for it to be "open source" for the entire industry to use.