Jan-Feb auto industry ad spend foreshadows even steeper drop-off as the Iran war puts pressure on vehicle and gas prices.

As the fastest growing demo in the US, Wells can pick up serious deposits with an engaged base.

NBCUniversal wrapped its 2025–26 Upfront with its highest ad sales volume in history, fueled by live events like the Olympics, FIFA World Cup, and Super Bowl LX. Sports volume rose 45% year over year, while Peacock grew 20%, now representing nearly a third of NBCU’s total Upfront commitments. Over $1 billion came from programmatic demand, with a 60% shift toward advanced audience buying. In a year where industry-wide Upfront spend is expected to shrink, NBCU’s performance showcases the power of premium content, audience precision, and diversified ad tech. Small business gains and cross-channel strategies helped NBCU stand out in a cautious market.

The auto industry joins shift to performance-driven channels: Marketers are pulling away from traditional media like TV as tariff pressures mount.

Major creators will hold event to vie for YouTube ad dollars: The Spotter Showcase will unveil crucial data and content slates to draw marketers away from traditional TV.

Disney’s “content everywhere” strategy, broken down: The company is working to maintain advertising dominance by capitalizing on live events.

CTV display ad spending will reach $33.35 billion in 2025, with 98.4% of those dollars going to video ads. Total CTV ad spending will see solid double-digit annual growth rates through our forecast period to reach $46.89 billion in 2028.

Pure-play advertising fuels US ad growth: Recurring events like the Olympics drive spending, but the market is steadily expanding even without them.

Spending on TV ads overall will resume growing in 2024. After a dip in 2023 caused by traditional TV’s long decline and a relatively weak period for CTV, combined spending on TV and CTV will grow every year through 2027 and close in on $100 billion. Except for 2020 and 2023, this combined market will have grown every year since we started tracking CTV in 2018.

US upfront TV ad spending will fall by 3.6% to $18.64 billion for the 2023–2024 TV season, a downward revision of 5.0% from our previous forecast.

On today’s episode, we discuss the relationship between video versus TV ad spend and time spent, what streaming services becoming more cost-conscious means for the space, what we can expect video measurement to look like this year, and more. Tune in to the discussion with our analyst Paul Verna.

There are a few ways to view the decline of the pay TV bundle. In our pay TV figures, we exclude vMVPDs, which deliver live TV over the internet. When viewed this way, pay TV will decline 7.2% this year to 66.4 million households. That figure will drop to 54.3 million households by the end of 2026.