Media buyers look to next year’s budgets as this year’s volatility leaves a lingering sting

“A single person — not to name names — can post something on their own social network and the stock market plummets,” Ringel said. “And a day later, that changes again. How do you operate in an environment like this as a brand? You have to be really careful.

“We see a direct correlation between how many deals come in in a week — on days where the government is still or nothing happens that destroys the world — or the government does something that could destroy the world. There is an immediate correlation between those numbers.”

Both in April, when Trump announced a suspension to certain tariffs, and August when they went into effect, were a “disaster,” Ringel said, who previously in the discussion onstage named a client list of over 250 that included Nespresso, Google, IBM and Moet Hennessy. That client roster cuts across categories including CPG, healthcare and financial services. 

CPG and retail is “way more exposed,” Ringel said. “Even in Q4 where you have to own the holidays they’re [marketers are] still being a little bit cagey about it.” Notably, CPG has been bullish on spend as a means to make up for the tariff uncertainty.

During the Summit’s Town Hall event, in which agency attendees were asked to anonymously provide challenges they’re seeing, only one submission was related to the charged news cycle: “tariffs and volatile market conditions.”

It’s a critical time to duck away from the news — as publishers face challenging traffic referral losses both from social media platforms and AI. But the topic of the news cycle, and brand safety and the tools that could solve for them, all took on new life under Chatham House Rules. For one who contributed to the conversation, the issue of tariffs landed soundly in the topic of education.

“Every time someone talks about tariffs you see a massive spike or decrease in performance,” one attendee said, particularly in categories like manufacturing.

They added that they’ve had to educate clients on these trends, and communicate that to sales teams. “It is a huge problem trying to say, ‘Hey, these market problems are actually affecting performance, both for good or bad.’ But sales didn’t want to hear that. They just want to hear, ‘Hey, we want results,’ which is the huge issue.”

“Data helps,” they added.