The up fronts kick off today, the annual advertising sales event for media companies.

We've been focused on the ad market for tech and specifically what impact AI is going to have.

Joining us for Tech Check today, ad legend Martin Sorrell with our dear

Durbosa.

Hey, D. Carl, thank you very much.

And Sir Martin Sorrell, good morning to you and thank you for being with us.

As Carl just mentioned, the up front is getting underway this week. So first, very broadly, what are you seeing in the ad market at the moment? Is it still softening or are you seeing signs of improvement?

Well, did it's afternoon here in London, so good afternoon, glad to be with you.

I think the answer is Q1 was a little bit slow.

We saw sales cycles lengthen. But if you look at the forecasts for the year, both from the

industry, from the platforms and from the media companies, there will be an increase in the like-for-like

growth rates as we go into Q2, Q3 and Q4.

Firstly, because budgets will have been fixed, clients were generally a little bit slow to fix

their operating budgets.

They fixed them in the first quarter of this year rather than the last quarter of last year not just the marketing budgets

the operating budgets that came from them the comparages as we go through Q2 three

and four

and make sure it get easier for ourselves,

our like for like growth rates last year,

we're around 33% in Q1 of last year, and for the year last year 26% so in Q2 3 and 4 they range

between 23 and 29 so the comparators get easier and we'll see I think improvements as a result of

that as we cycle through the year. Okay so on Tech Check we've been talking a

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