Despite the growing dominance of digital channels, traditional media remained resilient in 2024, according to a new report from MediaRadar. “Radio remained relatively stable, with local radio seeing slight growth, underscoring its continued relevance for local advertisers as well as national advertisers looking to tailor their messages to local audiences,” the ad market research firm says in a lookback at media buying trends this year.
However, traditional media channels are experiencing “varied fortunes,” per the report. Television saw a healthy 3% increase in media spending this year, thanks to billions of election ad dollars and major sporting events like the Olympics. TV came in second place among media channels, capturing about one in four ad dollars (23%). Print media, meanwhile, continued to deteriorate, dropping 11% overall as advertisers continue to shift their focus to digital platforms and concentrate their print budgets on fewer major publications. Still, print ranked third at 6%, followed by radio (3%), out-of-home (2%) and over-the-top video streaming (2%).
The report offers yet another reminder that radio investment in digital is a smart strategic move. Digital advertising and marketing services now account for $1 in every $5 the radio industry generates. But radio still has a long way to go. Across the total ad market, digital now captures nearly two-thirds of total media spending in the U.S., MediaRadar says, surging 8% year-over-year and reaching $107 billion for the first eight months of the year.
“Led by paid search, mobile, and paid social, digital media meets consumers where they spend the most time and checks all the boxes for advertisers: seamless engagement, quick conversions, and measurable impact,” the firm says in a blog post. “Brands across industries as varied as home improvement, department stores, automotive, QSRs, software, and financial services are investing heavily in digital channels to reach consumers at every step of their path to purchase.”
Telecom, professional services, and financial products & services were the top three spenders on radio in 2024. MediaRadar says its radio ad spend figures are “estimated through a combination of our observations and third-party data sources and includes a mix of over-the-air signals (25 markets) and webstreams (16 markets).”
‘Two Sides Of The Same Coin’
Most advertising forecasts still count radio and podcasting separately, but these audio siblings are “essentially two sides of the same coin,” MediaRadar says. Ditto for linear TV and OTT. “Podcast advertising, for instance, offers advertisers a unique opportunity to engage listeners in a personal and targeted manner, and its rapid expansion is a shot in the arm for traditional radio stations and producers willing to bridge the gap,” the report argues. “Similarly, OTT promises targeting capabilities advertisers could only dream of with linear TV, and most traditional media companies today are developing streaming offerings to get in the game and safeguard their TV budgets in the process.”
One of the overriding themes in the report from Meghan Fraze, Chief Product Officer at MediaRadar, Inc., is that traditional media channels are evolving, as OTT platforms outpace TV advertising growth and podcasting shows faster growth than traditional radio. “These shifts highlight a broader trend where brands are not just chasing audiences, but also strategically investing in media channels that offer superior tracking and optimization,” Fraze writes.
AI is 2024’s Marketing Word of the Year by the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) for the second straight year. In 2025, look for it to play the role of both savior and disruptor. Advertisers and agencies will increasingly rely on artificial intelligence and other advanced analytics “to enhance campaign design and delivery, and publishers will use it to improve how they monetize their audiences and control ad fraud,” MediaRadar predicts.
But AI will also create new challenges for the industry. Case in point: Do a web search for a topic or phrase and AI-generated answers will take up much of the top space, pushing traditional search results off the screen. “This makes it difficult for sponsored search results to stay visible, especially among young users who are more likely to take AI results at face value,” per the blog and accompanying report. “To come out on top in 2025, brands will need to recognize those challenges, not bury their head in the sand.”
For “Unlocking the future of advertising: What can we expect from media investments in 2025?” MediaRadar undertook a comprehensive review of U.S. advertising expenditures across top media channels between January and August 2024 and compared those expenditures to the year before. Download the report HERE.