US linear TV ad spending will hit $68.35 billion this year and fall to $64.94 billion in 2026. Despite that decline, ad spending on linear and connected TV (CTV) combined will increase from $87.24 billion this year to more than $100 billion in 2026 due to the surge in CTV viewing.

Following a banner year, US ad spending in 2022 will be shaped by three key trends: Linear TV crossing the Rubicon, a billionaires’ club emerging in connected TV (CTV), and ecommerce ad spending enriching Google, Amazon, and a crop of newcomers in search and retail media.

This year, 57% of US video ad spending will go to linear TV, a decline from 62% in 2021 and 71% in 2020. By comparison, ad spend share is increasing for connected TV (CTV) and other digital formats such as social video.

Several forces are driving up costs per thousand on both linear and connected TV. On the linear side, audience levels have dropped at a faster rate than ad spending, so more dollars are chasing fewer viewers.

Although a growing percentage of ad spending around TV content is happening through addressable, programmatic, and connected TV channels, making advertising more accountable, holistic campaign metrics that cut across the linear and digital domains remain elusive.

Much of the money exiting linear TV won’t go very far, partly because many Americans are shifting their behavior from one content source to another while using the same device.

While traditional TV ad spending will struggle for growth in the coming years, digital video will not. A portion of digital video spend will go to the nascent CTV space, but traditional broadcasters are also developing their own streaming services (with BVOD ad spend rising at a far faster rate than traditional TV spend). Overall, the advertising opportunity for CTV remains small.

Close to 8 in 10 branding professionals plan on allocating upfront spending to Hulu, per a survey from iSpot.tv. Peacock and YouTube TV are also major upfront spend magnets with 52% and 49% of branding professionals dishing ad dollars to those platforms, respectively.

US spending on linear TV ads will peak this year at $68.35 billion, up from $65.66 billion in 2021. This figure will not surpass $68 billion again for the next four years, with TV ad spend dropping to $64.94 billion in 2026 as its share of total media ad spend decreases as well.

YouTube isn’t just for the smallest screens as more viewing takes place on other connected devices and mobile use declines. Streamers are taking in more upfront ad dollars. Netflix is shaking things up after subscription drops.

We forecast that one-tenth of linear TV advertising will be sold programmatically this year. In just a three-year span, linear programmatic TV ad spending has more than doubled. Our linear programmatic TV forecast is a subset of our linear TV forecast. It does not affect our programmatic digital video numbers or our CTV numbers. How Did Our Forecast Change?