leading us to revise our forecasts for this year and beyond. Excluding political spending, we now expect a 22% growth in media ad revenue during 2021, a marked improvement from our prior forecast.

We now also expect 2021 advertising spending to be nearly 15% higher than in 2019 (political spending is not a significant factor in either 2019 or 2021). This amounts to a 7.4% compounded annual growth rate (CAGR), despite 2020’s 5.6% decline in underlying U.S. advertising growth. Growth rates in subsequent years, which now extend through 2026, are also incrementally elevated versus our prior forecasts.

In total, we estimate that total media company ad revenue will amount to $279 billion in 2021 and rise to $388 billion by 2026.

While the raised forecasts represent a significant change in some senses, they are more a matter of degree in others. At the time of our last update, published in March, it was evident that the ad market was relatively strong during the first quarter and that it would further benefit from high inflation across the economy, lifting our expectations for growth. But we didn’t fully appreciate just how much the economy and advertising market were heating up. It was only after we saw results for the quarter from the likes of Google, Facebook and Amazon (and Snap, Pinterest and others) that we could appreciate just how strong the market was, especially for digital media.