TV Forecast: Slow Growth For 2 Years

One advertising forecast says TV advertising will grow by a much slower rate in the next two years -- as digital media pushes marketers to shift budgets away from TV channels.

Brian Wieser, senior research analyst at the Pivotal Research Group, says national TV advertising -- without Olympic advertising -- will grow 2.4% in 2016 and 2.2% in 2017. Earlier estimates by Wieser showed growth of more than 3%.

He says because “digital-centric media owners pressed their case in recent years for marketers to increase digital spending,” marketers have shifted higher shares of budgets into digital media.

Wieser adds that local TV advertising -- sans political advertising -- will generally be flat in the coming years. He sees national TV cable networks growing 2.3% (to $26.0 billion) and 2.1% (26.5 million) in 2016 and 2017, respectively, with national English-language broadcast networks climbing 2.4% ($14.7 billion) and 2.2% ($14.8 billion) for those years.

National Spanish-language broadcast will climb faster at a 4.0% ($1.49 billion) in 2016 and 3.7% (1.55 billion) in 2017. National syndication and digital premium long-form programming will climb 2.4% to $2.66 billion in 2016 and 2.2% to $2.73 billion in 2017.

In his forecast, Wieser notes a change in his definitions with regard to TV and video advertising estimates. He separate TV-centric advertising that runs on traditional/digital platforms in premium long-form video -- TV shows, for example -- from other non-TV show digital video media.

Non-TV show related digital video advertising could be found in a banner ad or alongside a text-based Web site. TV-centric premium long-form video advertising, for example, could be TV commercials in shows -- for example, on Hulu.

From all this, Wieser says, “we have included related estimates in a line item for national syndication at this time.”

This reflects advertisers' typical budget allocations -- skewed toward TV and managed by a TV media-buying executive -- versus non-TV oriented media, skewed to digital media and managed by a digital media-buyer, Wieser says.

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