CHANTILLY, Va.—BIA Advisory Services has updated its 2026 U.S. Local Advertising Forecast and is now projecting that total local ad revenue will reach $186.1 billion, up $1.6 billion (+0.9%) from the firm's April 2026 estimate of $184.5 billion and approximately 9% year over year from 2025.

The increase is driven primarily by higher political ad spending heading into the midterms, along with continued strength in mobile.

The stronger than expected political ad spend is particularly good news for local TV stations as most of the growth has been flowing into TV station broadcasts and TV station digital platforms, the researchers said.

Overall, BIA is now projecting the TV over-the-air and TV digital/OTT ad revenue will hit $19.8 billion in 2026.

The firm also released a preliminary outlook for 2027 that sees growth in mobile and underlying local ad growth, particularly in Legal Services vertical, that will offset the end of the election cycle in 2027 and keep next year’s local ad spend essentially flat compared to 2026.

Excluding political advertising, the 2026 forecast is now $176.4 billion, up $0.3 billion (+0.2%) from the prior estimate of $176.1 billion and 3.9% over 2025, reflecting steady, broad-based growth across the underlying local ad market.

“Political spending came in higher than we anticipated in April, with most of the incremental spending flowing into TV OTA and TV OTT,” said Senan Mele, vice president of forecasting and data analysis, BIA Advisory Services. “Legal Services was also notable in this update, reaching $9.3 billion, up 4.6% from the prior forecast. Despite higher media costs and a more fragmented media environment, law firms continue to invest heavily in television, both linear and streaming, where the ability to reach large audiences and generate qualified leads continues to drive demand.”

BIA now projects $9.7 billion in 2026 for local political spending, up from $8.4 billion in the April forecast, which is an increase of $1.3 billion concentrated almost entirely in video. TV OTA and TV OTT together captured $1.2 billion of that increase, reinforcing broadcast and streaming video's role as a preferred vehicle for political campaigns.

The new data shows that mobile keeps compounding, and AI reshapes search.

Mobile remains the largest local media category tracked by BIA, projected to grow to $45.3 billion in 2026 (excluding political), an 8.9% year-over-year increase. This growth comes as competition intensifies in A.I.-fueled search advertising, a category that local advertisers have traditionally relied on to reach consumers across mobile devices.

“Google, OpenAI, Amazon, and Apple are all positioning themselves to capture a larger share of advertising tied to AI-powered search,” said Mike Boland, executive in residence, BIA Advisory Services. “Google’s Gemini is increasingly becoming an extension of its advertising business, while OpenAI, Amazon, and Apple are developing their own approaches to monetize search and discovery. For local advertisers, the bigger question is where consumer intent will emerge and which platforms will capture it. Mobile will be a critical battleground as that shift unfolds.”

BIA also highlighted some of the growth categories heading into 2027.

BIA's first look at 2027 projects total local ad revenue of $186.5 billion, essentially flat versus 2026. About $9 billion in underlying, nonpolitical growth is expected to nearly offset an $8.6 billion decline in political spending as the election cycle ends. Political spending is projected to fall to approximately $1.1 billion in the 2027 off-cycle year.

BIA’s Mele explained that “political spending will decline sharply after the midterms, but the underlying nonpolitical market has continued to grow and should offset much of that decline. We expect the overall local advertising market to remain essentially flat in 2027, with continued growth across core categories helping to support the market in an off-cycle year.”

Beneath that stable topline, several categories are projected to grow well above the market average. Real estate leads at +9.8%, followed by leisure and recreation (+5.9%), automotive (+5.1%), restaurants and food (+4.4%), and financial services (+3.7%).

“2027 makes clear that the underlying growth in local advertising is broader and more durable than the political cycle alone would suggest,” said Rick Ducey, managing director, BIA Advisory Services. “Political spending has accelerated the market and delivered a strong two-year period for broadcast and streaming video, but the more important story is what happens beneath that surge. Core categories continue to expand their investments across an increasingly diverse media ecosystem. That sustained, multi-platform demand, and the media channels that capture it, will shape the next phase of local media.”

For more information on the data, which comes from BIA ADVantage and to access the updated forecast, contact advantage@bia.com to request a demonstration.

Local television broadcasters take note: now might be the time to launch that local FAST (free-ad supported television) channel under consideration.

Ditto for the ATSC 3.0 fence sitters, especially those who plan to leverage the internet delivery aspect of the standard to stream channels over the top (OTT) to their viewers’ TVs, smartphones and media tablets.

At least, that may be the case if the projections laid out during the “What 2023 Will Bring: Local Ad Spending Forecasts” webinar from Borrell Associates play out as predicted. 

On a percentage basis, local television advertising spending looks to drop the most among 17 identified media verticals—down 18.07% next year. On the other side of the continuum, video/OTT is projected to grow 12.8% in 2023, the forecast showed.

Overall, total local ad spending is expected to climb 3.2%. Digital formats will see an increase of 7.7%, while non-digital formats will drop 5.9%, according to the forecast.

However, both Gordon Borrell, company CEO, and Corey Elliott, executive vice president of Local Market Intelligence at Borrell Associates, who presented during the online event emphasized the local TV ad spend number is the money attributed solely to terrestrial TV ads, not a projection for all ad spending with an individual station, which would include dollars spent on a station’s online properties.

“Now your eye probably immediately goes to the right hand side of this graph,” said Elliot, “because that's where the big pretty bars are. …[T]hose four are all about search, OTT and we call it targeted banners [which include social media ads and any other banner delivered online],” said Elliott.

While some of the decline reflects 2023 being a non-political year, it’s not all related to the lack of campaign ads. Nor does the entire decline reflect it being a non-Olympics year, he said.

Despite the expected decline, television remains the top non-digital form of media advertising, he added. 

“There are also other things to be considered. There’s network spots, national spots, syndicated TV that are not included in that local 18% number…. If you factor those things in, the drop changes to about 12%,” said Elliott.

Borrell’s forecast looked at local ad spending in the aggregate, not at what individual local stations can expect in their individual markets. The pair pointed out that results vary from market to market. For example, while local cable TV ad dollar spending is expected to climb 7.3% in Roubidoux, Mo., it is projected to drop next year by 10.3% in San Jose, Calif., according to the presentation.

There is a bright spot on the horizon, however. The number of viable small businesses has exploded since the pandemic. Quoting statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau tracking new business applications, 6.2 million businesses categorized as “high-propensity,” a term the bureau assigns to those with a good prospect of becoming businesses with a payroll, have been created since 2020. 

There has also been growth in the percentage of U.S. business locations with fewer than 10 employees, rising from 90% in 2019 to 94% this year. These small businesses typically do not have the marketing and advertising experience of larger local businesses, are thus more likely to use social and digital out of familiarity with those media and are hungry for guidance, said Borrell.

Ad spending among this group is higher when considered as a share of gross income than businesses with 10 or more employees, and the average annual ad budget of these small businesses is $27,836, said Elliott.

“These businesses, if our theory holds, are below the radar. They’re invisible. They’re not on a report you see in your sales reps’ traditional prospecting…. So if these businesses are in fact new, and they’re beginning to spend, but most of it’s on developing their Facebook page,… developing their own website… they have marketing needs,” said Borrell.

“…[Y]ou have got a broadcast medium at your disposal,” he said. “Advertise yourself. Start a series of seminars in the market about marketing. Find ways to push the message out there that you really know about marketing, [and] you can help people…. Don’t sell them television advertising.

“Tell them you are going to help them with search marketing and Facebook marketing [and] should they be advertising on TikTok—some best practice examples of advertising on TikTok. They’ll show up in droves because they’ve been reading about it. That brings them out of the woodwork.”

More information is available on the company’s website.

CHANTILLY, Va.—BIA Advisory Services is forecasting a strong U.S. local ad market in 2022, growing by 10.1% to $161.5 billion as mobile advertising spending surpasses direct mail for the first time ever.  

The new forecasts for the entire U.S. local ad market follow the release in late September of the BIA forecasts for local television in 2022. That release forecast that local TV will rise to $19.3 billion in OTA advertising, and $1.7 billion in digital in 2022; a sign of a strong $21 billion industry that delivers its audience for political campaigners, the BIA said. 

In BIA’s `U.S. Local Advertising Forecast 2022' released on October 13, the overall local U.S. advertising market is expected to reach $161.5 billion – a 10.1 percent year over year bounce – buoyed by overall strong economic tailwinds coming out of 2021. 

The forecast reported that traditional media revenue will account for $84.6 billion and digital media will be close behind at $76.8. BIA also anticipates $7.5 billion of the sum will come from political advertising during a strong election season.

“For a long time, we’ve been talking about direct mail as the king of the share of wallet in local ad spending,” said Rick Ducey, managing director of BIA Advisory Services. “This coming year, for the first time, we pass the crown over to mobile, as its momentum drives it to be the biggest overall piece of the spending wallet – and we expect that to continue in the foreseeable future.”

BIA puts mobile spending at 21 percent of the 2022 forecast and direct mail at 20.7 percent, but the gap between the two will continue to widen, BIA said. 

Overall, digital ad spending will reach $76.8 billion, with Google and Facebook controlling over half of the spending. Google takes the lion’s share at $26.8 billion, compared with Facebook’s $14.3 billion, BIA reported. 

Ducey points to four reasons mobile has become the number one advertising medium: (1) COVID’s impact on consumer’s increased time spent with mobile and other digital media making digital the place to find and target consumers; (2) digital’s overall momentum in winning more revenue share of media time from traditional media; (3) the rise of virtual consumer channels like delivery, curbside pickup and ecommerce in top categories like retail, restaurants, CPG where physical channels like retail store visits decline; and (4) greater consumer acceptance and use of virtual and ecommerce channels. 

Mark Fratrik, senior vice president and chief economist at BIA, added that the firm’s U.S. Local Advertising forecast also sees a rise in local radio advertising revenue in 2022. 

Radio is expected to generate $12.7 billion split between over-the-air ($11.0 billion) and digital ($1.7 billion). By 2026 radio digital revenues are expected to reach $2.4 billion, while OTA goes up and down with the even political years and ends at $11.7 in 2026. 

“Radio isn’t faring as well as local broadcast TV, and it doesn’t get the same bump as TV in political years,” said Fratrik. “But it is getting close to its pre-pandemic levels as people continue to return to work commutes and traveling by car.”

“I like to refer to our data on local television as our ‘piano key graphs,’ because during even political years it is very apparent that the advertising revenue will rise and then dip the following year,” Fratrik added. 

CHANTILLY, Va.—As the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic rolls on in the U.S., BIA Advisory Services has updated its 2020 local advertising revenue forecast from April to today, where it is estimating $140.4 billion for the total local advertising market.

The April readjustment from BIA dropped the company’s initial projection of $161.3 billion for 2020 to $144.3 billion. Now with this latest drop to $140.4 billion, 2020 would experience a 6.1% decline from 2019’s numbers, even with the upcoming presidential election.

Revenue from political ads are one of the few positives for the local ad markets. Since April, BIA has increased the expected political ad spend from $7.1 billion to $7.3 billion. Of that new spending, $138 million is estimated to be going to TV OTA, $40 million to cable, $26 million to online/digital and $5 million to radio OTA.

Other advertising verticals showing some resilience during these times are healthcare and finance & insurance. While both are down in overall ad revenue spend, there is steady and in some cases even increasing ad spend.

For overall media ad spend, all media except for OTT are experiencing a decline in ad revenue.

“Right now, we believe a realistic view of the economy overall and the advertising marketplace is that after a dramatic decrease in the second-quarter and a bumpy start to the third, the remainder of the year will turn positive but end up with an overall decline in local advertising for the year,” said Mark Fratrik, senior vice president and chief economist at BIA.

BIA is set to join SalesFuel to present local advertising data and analysis during the “Accelerating 4th Quarter Revenue: Planning for 2021” webinar on Aug. 18 at 11 a.m. ET.

For more information, visit www.bia.com.  

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CHANTILLY, VA.—Local ad revenue is predicted to reach record highs by 2021 in large part due to the growth of local online and mobile video, as well as mobile and social advertising, according to the midyear update of BIA/Kelsey’s “U.S. Local Advertising Forecast 2017.” With an expected 17 percent growth for online and mobile sources, BIA/Kelsey believes that the local ad revenue could reach $174 billion by 2021.

All of this despite the updated report decreasing its advertising estimate for 2017. The report adjusts this year’s potential revenue to $147.9 billion, citing an overall weaker economy in the beginning of 2017 that has led to softness in advertising revenues. However, forecasts for online/digital ad revenues are higher than predicted, with a 2016-2021 Compound Annual Growth Rate of 11.6 percent. Over that same period, traditional ad revenue sources are expected to see a slight decline of 0.6 percent CAGR.

“Although national and local businesses still utilize a mix of digital and traditional advertising platforms, the opportunities afforded by mobile, social and video advertising are incredibly valuable due to their measurability, adoption by consumers and enhancements by technologies such as beacons and data attribution that blend extraordinarily well with today’s mobile consumer,” said Mark Fratrik, chief economist for BIA/Kelsey.

Mobile has already made strides in replacing more traditional ad revenues. The report forecasts the top four media sources contributing to the local media pie for 2017, rounded out by direct mail at $37.1 billion; local TV at $20.9 billion; online/interactive at $18.6 billion; and newspapers at $16 billion. Mobile, at $16 billion, took over the number five spot, edging out local radio, which dropped to number six with a contribution of $15.6 billion.

The “U.S. Local Advertising Forecast” is a five-year forecast that delivers a national overview of total U.S. spending in local markets. To full report is available through BIA/Kelsey.