CHANTILLY, Va.—As the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic rolls on in the U.S., BIA Advisory Services has updated its 2020 local advertising revenue forecast from April to today, where it is estimating $140.4 billion for the total local advertising market.
The April readjustment from BIA dropped the company’s initial projection of $161.3 billion for 2020 to $144.3 billion. Now with this latest drop to $140.4 billion, 2020 would experience a 6.1% decline from 2019’s numbers, even with the upcoming presidential election.
Revenue from political ads are one of the few positives for the local ad markets. Since April, BIA has increased the expected political ad spend from $7.1 billion to $7.3 billion. Of that new spending, $138 million is estimated to be going to TV OTA, $40 million to cable, $26 million to online/digital and $5 million to radio OTA.
Other advertising verticals showing some resilience during these times are healthcare and finance & insurance. While both are down in overall ad revenue spend, there is steady and in some cases even increasing ad spend.
For overall media ad spend, all media except for OTT are experiencing a decline in ad revenue.
“Right now, we believe a realistic view of the economy overall and the advertising marketplace is that after a dramatic decrease in the second-quarter and a bumpy start to the third, the remainder of the year will turn positive but end up with an overall decline in local advertising for the year,” said Mark Fratrik, senior vice president and chief economist at BIA.
BIA is set to join SalesFuel to present local advertising data and analysis during the “Accelerating 4th Quarter Revenue: Planning for 2021” webinar on Aug. 18 at 11 a.m. ET.
For more information, visit www.bia.com.
