The advertising market has positive momentum going into 2025 \u2014 especially for media companies with sports rights and tentpole live programming.<\/p>\n
Sports and live events such as awards shows reigned supreme in conversations with media executives who weighed in on their expectations for the advertising market in the year ahead. The end of the uncertainty surrounding the election has helped the outlook improve, too, they said.<\/p>\n
And despite consumers fleeing the traditional TV bundles, with more ad dollars going toward streaming, executives emphasized that traditional TV is still important in discussions with advertisers, especially when it comes to sports.<\/p>\n
Overall, executives said they expect stability in the market and are hoping to move past the slowdown in ad spending in recent years.<\/p>\n
\u201cNormalization is the right way to say it with the advertising market,\u201d said Mark Marshall, NBCUniversal\u2019s chairman of global advertising and partnerships. \u201cWith the election settled, a lot of companies feel the uncertainty over that has gone away.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added that the company has seen more so-called scatter market budgets come in during the fourth quarter, which is what the industry calls the buying and selling of ads closer to their airdate versus ads that are bought further out.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur first quarter is looking really strong. I think that any election year is challenging for anyone in the fourth quarter because a lot of marketers end up sitting on their hands since the airwaves and digital are crowded,\u201d said Dan Porter, CEO of sports media company Overtime. \u201cI think that\u2019s true for us and it\u2019s true for everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yet despite the uptick in ad revenue following the election and the forecast stability, Natalie Bastian, global chief marketing officer at Teads, said she expects a lot of the same trends.<\/p>\n
Bastian noted that 2024 included major moments like the Summer Olympics and presidential election, which strengthened TV ad revenue. She expects the same budgets to carry over into the new year, however.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we\u2019ve heard in general from some of our closest partners \u2026 media budgets aren\u2019t growing, and so there\u2019s just more selection into where [advertisers are] spending their money,\u201d said Bastian. This makes sports and live programming that much more important to media companies.<\/p>\n
Overall, the global advertising industry is expected to surpass $1 trillion in total revenue for the first time this year, excluding\u00a0U.S. political advertising, and will grow 7.7% in 2025 to reach $1.1 trillion, according to a\u00a0recent report\u00a0from GroupM, WPP\u2019s media investment group. Advertising on digital platforms \u2014 which includes\u00a0retail media\u00a0as a segment \u2014 is what\u2019s driving that increase.<\/p>\n
TV, considered \u201cthe most effective form of advertising,\u201d is expected to grow nearly 2% in 2025 to $169.1 billion in total global ad revenue. In comparison, ad revenue for \u201cpure-play digital,\u201d which excludes \u201cthe digital extensions of traditional media\u201d like streaming but includes platforms like YouTube and TikTok, is expected to grow by 10% to $813.3 billion globally in 2025, according to GroupM.<\/p>\n
Sports keep attracting big audiences and advertisers, leading media companies to\u00a0pay hefty sums\u00a0for the rights to games.<\/p>\n
Commercials during live sports generated 24% more engagement than other programming, according to EDO,\u00a0an advertising data company.<\/p>\n
\u201cLive event coverage will continue to be a cornerstone of media engagement, and streaming services must step up their game,\u201d said Tim Hurd, vice president of media at Goodway Group. \u201cAs more streaming platforms\u00a0dive into sports, the challenge will be to keep viewers engaged, not just by offering content, but by enhancing the overall experience with personalized, non-disruptive ad units.\u201d<\/p>\n
Comcast\u2019s NBCUniversal said the\u00a0Summer Olympics\u00a0in Paris generated a record $1.2 billion in ad revenue. It appeared to have\u00a0paid off, with the company reporting a total audience delivery of more than 30 million people on NBC\u2019s TV and streaming platforms.<\/p>\n
Fox Corp.\u00a0executives have said the company already sold out of Super Bowl ads for this coming February, which\u00a0reportedly\u00a0cost about $7 million each. The 2024 Super Bowl had an\u00a0estimated\u00a0123.7 million viewers.<\/p>\n
And\u00a0Disney\u00a0said it had sold out of ads for its Christmas Day NBA games two weeks before they aired. The company added that it\u2019s \u201cpacing up substantially\u201d for the full NBA season when it comes to ad revenue compared with last year, and that it\u2019s \u201calready seen early movement\u201d for the postseason in the scatter market.<\/p>\n
The audience for women\u2019s sports, driven by the WNBA in particular, also ramped up in the last year, meaning more opportunities for advertisers.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is beyond Caitlin Clark, even though she is a massive catalyst,\u201d said Josh Mattison, Disney Advertising\u2019s executive vice president of digital revenue pricing, planning and operations. \u201cThis was a transformational year in terms of audiences.\u201d<\/p>\n
The audience for the WNBA hit a\u00a0record\u00a0in 2024, and consumers were 16% more likely to engage with ads during these games compared with last year, according to EDO. But while advertisers spent $8.5 billion on sports TV ads in 2024, women\u2019s sports only made up 3% of that number, according to EDO, leaving plenty of room for growth next year.<\/p>\n
The growing popularity of women\u2019s sports and its importance for media companies was evident this month when\u00a0Netflix\u00a0secured the U.S. rights to the FIFA Women\u2019s World Cup in 2027 and 2031. The streaming giant has been bulking up its sports portfolio, as have its peers across the legacy and digital media space.<\/p>\n
While consumers are\u00a0cutting the cord\u00a0and streaming services are now snapping up sports rights, linear TV\u2019s audience still significantly outpaces streaming.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s still declines in linear TV in a lot of markets, but not in all markets,\u201d said Kate Scott-Dawkins, GroupM\u2019s global president of business intelligence, noting there are international markets that are seeing growth. \u201cWhen we talk about total TV, there is still a lot of opportunity and hopefully a renewed appreciation for how effective that can be as a medium [for advertisers].\u201d<\/p>\n
Amy Leifer, DirecTV Advertising\u2019s chief ad sales officer, said the company predicts continued growth in programmatic ad spending, or automated digital ad buying, in streaming.<\/p>\n
\u201cDespite the shift towards streaming, linear TV still holds a significant advantage in terms of ad impressions, generating six times more than streaming,\u201d said Leifer.<\/p>\n
Executives said they have been talking with advertisers about how to look at linear and streaming together when disbursing ad dollars.<\/p>\n
Leifer said DirecTV Advertising\u2019s mantra is that \u201cTV is TV,\u201d no matter the distribution method. \u201cOur focus for 2025 is to unify digital and linear television advertising by adopting a comprehensive approach and developing convergent TV solutions,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
Both Marshall of NBCUniversal and Mattison of Disney said advertisers used to be focused on linear \u201cversus\u201d streaming. That\u2019s not the case anymore.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe pitch [we made to advertisers] last year is you really can\u2019t look at one versus the other. When it\u2019s rolled out into one platform, it\u2019s how do you look at digital and linear together. That\u2019s made a huge difference,\u201d said Marshall, noting that older audiences are more present on linear TV, while younger generations have gravitated toward streaming.<\/p>\n
Marshall said that NBCUniversal\u2019s Peacock \u201chasn\u2019t been cannibalizing linear,\u201d because there\u2019s little overlap between the content on both distribution outlets. \u201cIt\u2019s actually two distinct, different audiences,\u201d Marshall said.<\/p>\n
Mattison noted Disney\u2019s expansive sports portfolio and its various platforms across linear and streaming, with TV networks like ABC and ESPN, and streaming service ESPN+, which has content being added to Disney+, have been an advantage.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe convergence [of the streaming apps] is really good for consumers, which leads to growth for advertisers,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re fortunate we spent years building our streaming ad tech, and we\u2019re able to maximize audience reach as well as targeting and performance.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe a few years ago it was linear versus streaming. I think now it\u2019s linear AND streaming,\u201d Mattison continued. \u201cThey\u2019re kind of planned together. It\u2019s true on both the media side and the advertiser side.\u201d<\/p>\n
Disclosure: Comcast owns CNBC parent NBCUniversal. NBCUniversal owns NBC Sports and NBC Olympics. NBC Olympics is the U.S. broadcast rights holder to all Summer and Winter Games through 2032.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n The advertising market has positive momentum going into 2025 \u2014 especially for media companies with sports rights and tentpole live programming. Sports and live events such as awards shows reigned supreme in conversations with media executives who weighed in on their expectations for the advertising market in the year ahead. The end of the uncertainty […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":13543,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13542"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13542\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}