For several years, the projections have shown that digital media advertising revenue will be close to surpassing traditional media. In 2025, digital media will reign supreme, according to forecasts from BIA Advisory Services.
During a Marketron webinar about the 2025 Radio Revenue Outlook, projections from BIA shared that 52% of local media advertising revenue will be placed with digital media this year. $89 billion is forecasted with digital, including over-the-top/connected TV, TV Digital, Radio Digital, PC/Laptop, Mobile, and Email advertising.
Meanwhile, $82 billion is projected to be spent on traditional media platforms like cable, over-the-air radio and television, direct mail, and print advertising.
“I joined BIA almost three years ago, and when I did join, we were starting to talk about how digital was about to take over traditional in terms of total spending through the US local advertising. And that did not come to fruition until this year,” said BIA Vice President of Forecasting and Analysis Nicole Ovadia.
“It’s interesting that the last couple of years, digital continues to grow more quickly than traditional but it is not growing quite as quickly as it once was,” she noted. “There are third-party cookie issues, there’s data privacy, there are reasons and factors that are slowing the exponential growth that digital enjoyed for so long.”
BIA Advisory Services did note that, when including political, digital media did surpass traditional media in 2024.
In total, U.S. local advertising revenue is projected to reach $170.9 billion between traditional and digital media in 2025. That figure represents a 5.5% year-over-year increase compared to 2024, excluding political dollars.
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