NEW YORK: Adspend in the US rose 3.5% in the second quarter of 2013 to $35.8bn, but growth would have been lower without the influence of last summer's Olympic Games and some extra NBA basketball play-offs, according to the latest industry data.

Kantar Media, a media agency, said that adspend has now increased for six consecutive quarters, but growth in the quarter would have been about 2.5% had advertisers not conserved budgets in Q2 2012 ahead of the Olympics, Advertising Age reported.

More NBA play-off games this year also helped to boost total TV adspend by 6.4% to $18.4bn of which cable TV accounted for $6.9bn, up 14.9%, and broadcast TV rose 4.9% to $5.3bn.

Jon Swallen, chief research officer at Kantar Media North America, said adspend had "its best performance in a non-Olympic period since the end of 2010".

In other findings from the new report, as reported by Adweek, Spanish language TV spending increased 6.1% to $1.58bn, spot TV declined 3.5% to $3.28bn and syndication fell 1% to $1.28bn.

Procter & Gamble once again emerged as the nation's top-spending advertiser, spending $804.8m in the quarter, up 35% from last year, while telecoms giant AT&T increased spending by 33% to $501.8m.

General Motors spent $378.6m, up 28%, while total spending among the ten largest advertisers rose 16% to $1.58bn.

In terms of categories, retail marketing accounted for $3.82bn, the auto industry increased spending by 7% to $3.63bn while telecom marked the largest increase of 19.5% to take its spend to $2.36bn.

Turning to print, consumer magazine advertising rose 1.9%, but the number of ad pages fell 2.1%, and ad spending on local papers declined 4.3%.

Internet display advertising rose 4.1%, partly because of increased spending by the financial services and telecom sectors.

Data sourced from Advertising Age, Adweek; additional content by Warc staff