Fueled by an influx of billions in political ad dollars, total media revenue in the U.S. will climb 8.6% to $175.6 billion in 2024, according to BIA Advisory Services. With concerns about an economic downturn still reverberating, along with overall lower ad spending, the firm’s just-released 2024 U.S. Local Advertising Forecast calls for a more modest 2.2% increase to $164.6 billion when a projected $11 billion in political ad sales is excluded from the forecast.
With spending for the 2024 election cycle already far ahead of where it was four years ago, political spending will dominate the ad market next year. “Even in markets that are not highly contested there will be a large amount of political advertising,” BIA’s VP of Forecasting & Analysis Nicole Ovadia says. “Local political advertising will be fueled by the Presidential and Senate campaigns as well as issue-based advertising,” she says.
But set aside the mountains of incoming political cash and the BIA number crunchers expect “only a slight increase in ad spending, due to both global and local economic trends that may create more cautious spending,” Ovadia says.
