Retail Media Heats Up, TV Cools Down In Guideline’s Q4 Outlook.

As media buyers begin locking in fourth-quarter advertising campaigns, new guidance from media intelligence firm Guideline suggests the biggest opportunities—and risks—will vary sharply by channel. Depending on which rival channel radio sales reps are selling against, it could offer a plan for how to play what amounts to a game of “buy or hold” among media planners considering whether to lock in year-end inventory now.

While retail media and programmatic connected TV inventory are expected to become more expensive as the holiday season approaches, national television appears to be moving in the opposite direction, with prices softening and advertisers potentially able to wait for better deals.

In Guideline’s latest “Media Monitor” episode outlining its Q4 outlook, Chief Insights and Analytics Officer Sean Wright says the company analyzed both forward booking data and modeled future demand to identify where advertisers should buy early and where they may benefit from holding off.

At the top of Guideline's "buy now" list is retail media, where demand continues to outpace available inventory. Wright says retail media has posted six consecutive quarters of price increases, with no signs of slowing ahead of the critical holiday shopping season. “This feels like the kind of place where it's not going to get any cheaper going into Q4," he says.

Programmatic connected TV also remains a hot market, according to Guideline. Wright says prices continue to rise as demand increases, making it another area where advertisers may benefit from securing inventory before the holiday rush.

By contrast, the outlook for broadcast television is considerably softer. Guideline says national TV scatter pricing continues to decline, while overall spending on television also appears to be weakening heading into the fourth quarter. Wright suggests advertisers may be better served waiting until campaigns are closer to launch before making television buys.

"Outside of the NFL, there's not a ton carrying TV in Q4," he says, adding that buyers may find better pricing by holding off until later in the season.

The report also suggests the upcoming midterm elections are unlikely to reverse that trend for national television. Instead, Wright said political advertisers have historically concentrated spending in local media — a potential plus for radio — as well as digital options like YouTube, connected TV and social platforms.

Social media presents a different picture. While advertising dollars continue flowing into social platforms, pricing has declined for several consecutive quarters because platforms such as TikTok and Instagram effectively have unlimited inventory. As a result, Guideline says advertisers face little pressure to reserve inventory months in advance despite continued spending growth.

‘Dead Internet’

Beyond media pricing, Wright is tracking a broader trend that could eventually reshape how advertisers think about digital media based on the growing influence of artificial intelligence.

Research shows that fewer Google searches now result in users clicking through to websites as AI-generated summaries increasingly answer questions directly. Wright says that shift is forcing publishers to rethink how they present content, with some creating simplified, text-only versions of their websites designed primarily for AI crawlers rather than human readers.

But an even bigger change may be underway as automated traffic continues to replace human activity online.

"At this point, bots now outnumber humans in terms of traffic on the internet," Wright says. "We are approaching what is truly a dead internet, meaning the things you interact with on the internet are not people — they're bots, they're AI." He predicts publishers could eventually build an entire "sub-internet" of machine-readable websites designed exclusively for AI systems rather than human visitors.

Such a trend could ultimately highlight one of radio's enduring strengths. Unlike much of the web, radio continues to deliver live personalities, local content and real-time human interaction — attributes that become more distinctive if consumers increasingly find themselves interacting with AI-generated content online. For advertisers seeking to reach real people rather than algorithms, that human connection could become an increasingly valuable differentiator.