The Wow Company has released the 2019 agency benchmark report resulting from its annual survey of independent agency owners in the UK. Topics include growth rates, confidence levels, amount of time owners spend working, cash flow/invoicing/collecting payments, new business, and networking tips.

Prospect and PublicAffairsAsia share the findings from their annual survey of practitioners in the communications and corporate affairs industry in Asia Pacific.

Zenith has released its Q4 2018 issue of Global Intelligence with data and insights on the global advertising market. Topics include global ad spend growth by region and medium, spotlight on Singapore, marketing tech issues, focus on the automotive category, shoppable content, and digital channels.

Zenith predicts global ad spend will grow 4.7% in 2019, reaching $623 billion. In both 2020 and 2021, the growth rate is expected at 4.6%.  As for the U.S., ad expenditures are expected to increase 5.0% in 2019, 4.2% in 2020, and 4.8% in 2021.

Marsha Appel, SVP, 4A’s Research uses her expertise in government data to examine the most current employment data for advertising, marketing, and public relations firms to rank the top cities for agency employment. Reasons behind changes in rankings, impact of the recession, and a look towards the future of agency employment are included in this article

The Future Today Institute forecasts emerging technology trends that will influence the advertising, public relation, media, and journalism industries in the year ahead.

Dentsu reports that 2018 advertising expenditures in Japan have increased 2.2% over last year. Read more here to see ad spend figures for 2014-2018, plus a breakdown of statistics by traditional media, Internet, promotional media, and by industry.

RSW/US explores the biggest challenges facing ad agencies from the perspectives of both marketers and ad agencies.

Dentsu Aegis estimates that global ad expenditures will grow 3.8% in 2019 to $625 billion. In the US, digital is expected to surpass TV’s share of ad spend for the first time.

Brian Wieser of Pivotal Research Group provides perspective on the outlook for agency holding companies.

Kantar discusses media and digital predictions for 2019.

PubMatic has released its digital ad expenditure forecasts for 2019. U.S. and global ad spend predictions are provided for programmatic, mobile, video, private marketplace, and header bidding. The report also includes a section on inventory and ad quality.

MAGNA’s latest global advertising forecast reveals that worldwide ad revenue grew by 7.2% to $552 billion in 2018. In the U.S., expenditures grew 7.5% to $208 billion.

GroupM has released its latest worldwide ad spend forecast with a prediction that global ad expenditures will grow 4.3% in 2018 and 3.6% in 2019.

SoDA and Forrester feature research digital trends to watch, growth in digital marketing budgets, agency landscape trends, and client-agency relations.