Local Digital Ad Spending Tops $100B As Broadcasters Gain Ground.

Streaming, search, and social are reshaping local ad budgets — but radio and TV aren’t out of the picture. Digital revenue is lifting many broadcasters. Borrell Associates’ 2025 Annual Report Benchmarking Local Digital Media report breaks down where growth is happening, what’s working, and why new advertisers are giving legacy media a second look.

Local digital advertising blew past a major milestone in 2024, topping $100 billion and accounting for 70% of all local ad spend — a stunning reversal from the print-dominated landscape of the 1990s. While growth is slowing, the digital trajectory remains solid, with a projected 3.9% increase in 2025 and similar gains through 2028, according to the report.

For the first time, Borrell Associates is offering the report free of charge for those who attend a webinar on the findings on Wednesday, May 21, at 11am. Registration information can be viewed HERE.

According to the report, consumer behavior is driving the shift. Search, display and streaming/CTV now dominate local digital budgets, fueled by short-form video on TikTok, Reels, and YouTube Shorts. These formats are expected to represent 78% of digital and 57% of total local ad spend within three years.

Despite pure-play platforms like Google and Meta continuing to siphon the lion’s share, local media outlets are slowly reclaiming ground. In 2024, traditional local media captured 14.9% of digital ad dollars — their fourth straight year of incremental gains — by leveraging in-market relationships and bundling services that the big tech platforms can’t offer.

For broadcasters and newspapers alike, digital has become a lifeline. In many cases, it now accounts for more than half of print revenues and a growing, though smaller, share for TV and radio stations. Leading operators are shifting their digital mix to rely more on off-site revenue sources like resold search, streaming, and audience extension. In 2024, radio’s core ad revenue was $7.3 billion, and its digital ad revenue was $2.1 billion, accounting for 22.5% of overall ad revenue.

Yet the structural gap remains stark. Tech platforms are reinvesting heavily — up to 40% of revenue goes into R&D — while traditional media outlets largely lack those innovation budgets. The imbalance is widening the competitive divide.

Adding complexity to the landscape is the changing face of local advertisers. Since the pandemic, U.S. business formation has soared to five million filings per year, with the small business population jumping 4.7% in 2024 alone. That influx of newer, often digital-native businesses is challenging old-school prospecting models.

Ironically, these new entrants show more openness to traditional media than legacy advertisers, Borrell says. Since 2020, newer businesses have been twice as likely to increase spending on radio, TV, and print. Effectiveness scores for legacy media are climbing, even as confidence in local reps’ digital acumen declines.

Of nearly 2,600 local media companies, 85% command less than a 10% share of their market’s digital dollars. Only 3.5% qualify as “best practice” operators, capturing a quarter share or more. Daily newspapers are the only segment where digital revenue has stagnated since 2020.

On average, about half of a local media company’s digital income comes from banners and sponsorships, 25% from streaming/OTT, and 20% from fee-based services. As the mix evolves, so does the urgency for legacy players to accelerate their transformation — or risk being further left behind.