A research firm which counts US ad spend, put out a report this week which effectively says that advertising is shrinking, not growing. The report from Standard Media Index (SMI) claimed that 2016 ad spend grew by 4.3% for Q4 and 6.8% for the entire year, but if you take out the Olympics and the US election, it said growth was a fall of 0.8%. However, the SMI report focused mostly on digital ad spend and which has seen phenomenal growth of 19% CAGR, which was accelerating until 2015, but which slowed to only 13.3% in 2016 as Telecoms companies began to feel the pinch from a saturated US market, which saw their ad spend fall to single figures. SMI…