CHANTILLY, Va—U.S. local advertising revenue is expected to rise 6.1% in 2025, driven mainly by spending on digital media, according to a new report from BIA Advisory Services.

Without major political campaign spending or the Olympics, BIA is still optimistic about the local ad outlook, predicting that it will reach $171 billion. When political advertising is included, the total estimated spend of $171.4 billion will be a slight decline of 0.5 percent below 2024, given last year’s relatively large political spend, which BIA tagged at $11.7 billion.

The numbers line up with BIA’s original forecast for 2025 last summer, but the updated forecast shows slight adjustments to previous estimates for 2025, with advertising revenue (excluding political) adjusted up by 0.03 percent from the last forecast and total local ad revenue, including political spending, adjusted up by 0.1%.

“Our latest forecast indicates that local advertising is showing resilience, despite the ongoing changes in the economic landscape," said Nicole Ovadia, VP of Forecasting and Analysis at BIA Advisory Services. "Although we expect core advertising to remain stable, we've adjusted our outlook to account for various market factors like interest rates and consumer sentiment and significant changes in media consumption patterns that are driving digital growth."

Key Findings:

• Digital transformation is accelerating rapidly: Traditional advertising channels show weaker performance metrics, while digital platforms surpass growth expectations. This trend indicates a faster-than-anticipated shift in advertising allocation strategies.
• Growth Platforms: Due to political advertising, there were more crowd-outs in 2024, so TV Digital grew faster than anticipated. Connected TV/Over-the-top is still the fastest growing overall as local advertisers continue to embrace this media.
• Political Impact: Despite being an off-election year, 2025 will see significant political advertising activity in key local markets affected by special elections and gubernatorial races.

The forecast indicates strong growth in several sectors: Real Estate at 9.3 percent, Restaurants at 9.2 percent, and Retail at 6.8 percent. These three sectors are critical indicators of local advertising activity and trends. The Education and Automotive verticals are also experiencing substantial growth, with increases of 5.0 percent each.

"Key verticals are showing notable shifts in 2025," said Rick Ducey, Managing Director at BIA Advisory Services. "While what we term the '3Rs'—Restaurants, Retail, and Real Estate—lead growth, we see interesting opportunities in Auto and Education. Auto dealers are likely to revive aggressive financing promotions when interest rates ease, and educational institutions are increasing their digital presence, particularly through geo-targeted campaigns, to connect with price-sensitive students who might not have considered nearby educational options before."

Rick Ducey will be a featured panelist on the TV Tech Leadership Summit next week. Click here to register for the free event.

BALTIMORE—As it announced new debt offerings, Sinclair, Inc. released released preliminary unaudited Local Media segment fourth-quarter 2024 media revenues and certain media operating expenses that show the company will product slightly lower than expected local media revenue. The preliminary figures show distribution revenue higher than expected while non-political ad revenue indicated a weakening ad market.

Most 2025 projections of local broadcast-TV ad revenue have indicated that core advertising excluding political will decline for the industry in 2025.

Sinclair expects Local Media segment media revenues to be $931 million to $933 million for the three months ended Dec. 31, 2024, down modestly from the company’s previously disclosed guidance of $936 million to $945 million. This includes political advertising revenue of approximately $203 million (versus previously disclosed guidance of $204 million), core (nonpolitical) advertising revenue of $300 million to $301 million (versus previously disclosed guidance of $307 million to $315 million) and distribution revenue of $392 million to $393 million (versus guidance of $386 million to $388 million), as well as other media revenue of approximately $37 million (versus previously disclosed guidance of $38 million), the company reported.

In addition, the company expects fourth-quarter 2024 Local Media segment combined preliminary media programming and production expenses and media selling, general and administrative expenses of $580 million to $582 million, which compares favorably to the company’s previously disclosed guidance of a total of $589 million to $590 million for the total of these two expense line items.

The company plans to report its fourth-quarter 2024 earnings results at 4 p.m. ET on Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2025, followed by a conference call to discuss the results at 4:30 pm ET. The preliminary results are unaudited estimates only and are subject to revision, the company stressed.

CHANTILLY, Va.—BIA Advisory Services said today that it expects revenues across all media in the U.S. will reach $165.7 billion in 2023, a decline of 0.5% from the firm’s final estimate of $166.5 billion for 2022. Removing political advertising revenues from the estimate, BIA projects $165.2 billion in total local advertising next year, a 4.8% increase in local advertising year-over-year. The almost flat revenue projections for the year indicate continued economic and supply chain concerns, but BIA expects things to improve starting mid-2023. 

“This year has been filled with contrasting economic indicators creating several challenges for the local advertising marketplace,” said Nicole Ovadia, VP Forecasting & Analysis, BIA Advisory Services. “Supply chain issues continued to plague the first couple of quarters of 2022 making it difficult for local media sellers. In the summer, we had higher hopes for the remainder of the year; however, inflation issues and recession fears started to set in and that stalled anticipated rebounds in key verticals such as automotive.”

“For our 2023 forecast we lowered near-term expectations to reflect the current economic climate that we anticipate will stay with us into next year.”

The 2023 forecast shows digital continues to gain on traditional media, growing its share to 49% of the overall advertising spend at $81 billion, with traditional media ad revenue taking up 51% of the ad spend at $84 billion. BIA has been slightly decreasing its digital estimates over the last couple of forecasting rounds because of opt-in privacy measures on Apple and Android devices that have slightly impacted mobile advertising growth. 

The top three paid media channels for 2023 include direct mail ($37.2B), mobile ($33.5B), and PC/Laptop ($29.0B). BIA says direct mail’s growth has been slowing substantially and is expected to continue that pattern at +1.5% in 2023 due to rising costs and the continued growth across all digital channels. TV Digital, Over-the-Top (OTT), and Mobile will rise +17.3%, +12.3%, and +8.1% respectively, with TV digital growing from a smaller base than the other media. 

The business verticals that are expected to grow, according to BIA’s 2023 U.S. Local Advertising Forecast are: education (9.7%), retail (8.7%) and, restaurants (7.5%). Notable declining verticals include political (-78%), leisure and recreation (-4.9%) and real estate (-1.0%). The automotive vertical is projected to grow 4.9 percent, but not until the latter part of 2023.

“When it comes to advertising in the business vertical market, education offers a tremendous opportunity for local media in 2023, with companies offering opportunities for employees to improve their training and with people who are experiencing a job transition often enrolling in classes to advance their education,” said Ovadia. “For other verticals, too, I believe they will pop potentially faster if we see the Fed slow or stop raising interest rates, inflation tamed and a smaller than anticipated recession. Even with the economy in flux, the continuing strength of the labor market and corporate profits makes me feel confident that key verticals will show growth in the year ahead.”

BIA is hosting a public webinar, Top Recession-Proof Verticals for 2023, on Wednesday, Nov. 30 at 2 pm to examine opportunities for local sellers. Registration is free and can be watched on-demand after its airing using the same link. Plus, BIA’s Tom Buono, CEO & Founder, and Nicole Ovadia discuss top economic takeaways from the forecast on a Leading Local Insights Podcast. Listen here. 

For BIA clients, the company’s BIA ADVantage™ platform and MEDIA Access Pro™ database now contain the updated 2023 U.S. Local Advertising Forecast, which covers 16 media and 96 sub-verticals and includes comprehensive local television and local radio forecast updates and market profile data. To purchase access to BIA’s forecast data, email advantage@bia.com.

CHANTILLY, Va.—The local advertising market looks different than it did at the start of 2020 because of the coronavirus, and BIA Advisory Services is readjusting its revenue projections as a result. After initially estimating a total revenue of $161.3 billion back in November 2019, BIA now projects the 2020 numbers to be $144.3 billion, a drop of 10.6%.

Local television, and local radio, have been heavily impacted by decreased ad spending by leisure & entertainment, restaurants, retail companies and sports cancellations. For local over-the-air TV, BIA decreased its estimated revenue for the year by $800 million ($17.8 billion to $17 billion); it projected the same loss for cable ($6.4 billion down to $5.6 billion). For online platforms, including TV online advertising and OTT advertising, the drop is estimated to be less significant, but still $100 million less each.

“A realistic view of the virus is that it will continue to have a negative impact on the second quarter, with some continuation into the third quarter,” said Mark Fratrik, senior vice president and chief economist, BIA. “We have assumed that there will be a strong rebound in the latter part of the year, but we will have to re-evaluate as the on-going economic impact becomes clearer.”

That rebound could come in the form of political advertising as the U.S. general election will take place in early November. These political ads are expected to soften the revenue decrease for local cable and local OTA TV stations compared to other media.

Related, many organizations, like NAB, and members of Congress have been pushing for federal advertising dollars to go to local media stations to help them continue to operate amid this loss in traditional advertising revenue.

As far as how to best move forward among the current uncertainty, BIA CEO and founder Thomas Buono says that media groups can focus on three key areas: preserving liquidity, emphasize and manage relationships and think forward as a team.

BIA is offering detailed local ad market revenue forecasts for 210 TV markets, along with a COVID resource area, through its BIA ADVantage platform.

For more information, visit www.bia.com.  

CHANTILLY, Va.—The 2020 presidential election will help U.S. local advertising revenue reach new heights, a projected $161.3 billion to be exact, according to a recent report from BIA Advisory Services.

BIA’s “U.S. Local Advertising Forecast 2020” forecast would be a 5.8% growth rate from the $152.5 billion in ad revenue from 2019, with political ad spending helping to boost revenue. Where this revenue comes from is also seeing significant change, as BIA sees increases in ad revenue from OTT and social media, though traditional media will remain the biggest resource.

Traditional media is expected to account for $94.4 billion of the ad revenue in 2020, up from $93.2 billion in 2019, which would make up 58.5% of the total revenue. Online/digital revenue will see a larger growth, however, earning an estimated $66.9 billion in 2020, or 41.5% of the total revenue; it earned $59.3 billion in 2019. OTT and social media are big drivers for this increase.

BIA forecasts that $1.06 billion in local activated advertising will be spent on OTT in 2020, and that number will grow to $2.13 billion by 2024. For social, $29.5 billion will be spent in 2020, growing to $44.6 billion by 2024. Social media ad revenue primarily comes from mobile devices, with them currently representing a 93.8% total and an expectation to hit 96% by 2024, as mobile native/social is the fastest growing segment of mobile advertising at 13.9%.

As far as the specifics of political ad spending, BIA projects that $6.58 billion will be spent for the 2020 elections. Over-the-air will account for nearly half ($3.07 billion or 47%), but online digital will bring in about 22% ($1.42 billion) and even OTT is getting in on the action, with an estimated $51 million (0.8%).

“The expectation of an aggressive presidential election next year, along with primaries and state-wide races, indicate that political ad spending will be a serious driver of local ad revenue next year,” said Mark Fratrik, chief economist and senior vice president at BIA. “Combine these factors with the ongoing growth of mobile and social advertising and the emergence and future significant advancement in over-the-top advertising, the revenue landscape for next year looks robust.”

The full “U.S. Local Advertising Forecast 2020” report is available on BIA’s website.