GroupM Forecasts Digital Audio Ad Market To Grow $3 Billion By 2029.

The media agency Group M has released a midyear update to its advertising outlook. It now projects the U.S. ad market to grow 5.8% this year to $365.9 billion, excluding political ad spending. That is a half-point stronger than its earlier projection. It forecasts 4.9% growth in 2025. GroupM says global advertising revenue will grow 7.8% in 2024 to $989.8 billion and the industry will surpass $1 trillion in revenue in 2025.

“We were a little bit more pessimistic about the U.S. market at the end of last year than we are now,” said Kate Scott-Dawkins, Global President, Business Intelligence at GroupM. “2024 Q1 earnings results were very strong,” she noted during a press briefing.

The outlook is a mixed bag for U.S. audio ad spending. GroupM thinks it will dip 1.5% this year as a 9.8% decline in terrestrial audio spending will not be fully offset by the 12% growth in digital audio. “Podcast growth has slowed, although we expect the further digitalization of audio as a channel and its embrace of AI should support ongoing growth across a variety of formats,” the report says. In 2024, GroupM says digital audio will represent 43.3% of total audio advertising, a share that is expected to rise to 57.6% by 2029.

The agency expects U.S. audio advertising to squeeze out a 0.2% increase in 2025.

On a worldwide basis, total audio advertising is forecast to grow 0.8% this year, increasing to $27 billion. “Growth will remain around 1% over the next three years, driven by increase in digital audio,” says GroupM. It expects digital audio to add nearly $3 billion – growing from an expected $7.9 billion in 2024 to $10.6 billion in 2029.

“Audio is another channel experiencing rapid digitalization and the channel we believe is experiencing the most rapid integration of AI into its advertising business outside of pure-play digital,” the report says.

Scott-Dawkins says the use of natural language processing and machine learning to learn listener behavior and to determine whether to insert a video ad or clickable ad is using AI to optimize the ad serving. GroupM sees that as part of the reason that marketers are shifting ad dollars. “We’ve assigned a much higher percentage to [digital] audio today than we did two years ago,” she said.

Digital pureplay advertising — which excludes audio — is forecast to grow 10% this year to $699 billion worldwide. That would give digital a 70.6% share of global ad spending. But if the digital extensions of traditional channels — like radio station online simulcasts — are added, the digital total would top 80%. In the U.S. market, GroupM expects digital ad spending to grow 20.7% this year.

This year, half the world’s population will be asked to vote, including in the U.S., where GroupM estimates 4.1% of total ad spending will come from political advertising. U.S. political advertising revenue is forecast to surpass $15 billion in 2024, with CTV and influencers netting larger shares of this total than in previous election cycles. In the next presidential election year in 2028, it expects political advertising to climb above $17 billion.

“Both in the U.S. and other markets, political advertising tends to benefit legacy channels as candidates look for broad national awareness or locally targeted media such as OOH, audio and local TV,” the report says. “But, as in the broader industry, more political spending is shifting to digital channels including search and social. We’ve also seen reports of paying micro-influencers to sway voters.” It estimates that in 2028, $9.3 billion of U.S. political ad revenue will flow to digital platforms.