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In response to viewership spikes, podcast ad spending is increasing. US spending is projected to reach $2.51 billion this year, growing 11% YoY, per our forecast. By 2028, spending will exceed $3 billion. Creator-audience relationships are important to listeners.

To help marketers better understand where and how ad dollars are being spent, Nielsen has expanded Ad Intel coverage to include 20 individual platforms, capturing 95% of the US CTV ad market. This transparency enables brands to analyze competitor strategies, assess platform performance, and make smarter investment decisions.

Amazon introduced greater brand safety controls on its DSP in February after Amazon, Google, and Meta were criticized by Congress for placing ads on sites with child sexual abuse content. 41% of US marketers are decreasing ad spend with media companies because of concerns over brand safety and suitability controls for ads—and more may follow suit without greater control over where ads run across platforms

On today's podcast episode, we discuss the significance of a democratic country like Brazil banning X, how it will impact the platform in terms of users and ad dollars, and how advertisers in America are viewing the situation. Tune in to the discussion with host Marcus Johnson, vice president and analyst Jasmine Enberg and analyst Matteo Ceurvels.

Streaming makes ad spending gains, Netflix experiences growing pains, and advertisers encounter a soft upfront market.

Programmatic digital display is no exception to the ad spending downturn that has sent ripples through our forecast. As marketers scrutinize their investments, social networks are losing share of the programmatic pie while CTV and retail media drive growth.

Despite impressive time spent, digital audio gets relatively few ad dollars. Although consumers will spend an average of 2:42 each day in 2024 listening to audio (21.4% of total media time spent), advertisers will buy only $17.61 billion in audio ads, roughly 4.5% of total US advertising spend.

Ad spending is looking shaky for many of the legacy formats across digital and traditional. New channels have arrived, however, and there are bright spots. This year could be rough, but 2024 is looking better.

Snap aims to highlight the experimental features available on Snapchat+ and leverage its leadership in AI and augmented reality through the McDonald’s partnership, which could help the company attract more users—and in turn, more ad dollars. Our take: Snapchat’s decision to collaborate with McDonald’s shows its evolving strategy to bolster user monetization through premium subscriptions.

Display advertising will capture 85.7% of the $90 billion in additional ad spending between 2024 and 2028. Search's share of digital spend will hold relatively steady at 41.5% in 2024. Retail media networks and AI search capabilities are expected to drive search growth. Nonvideo formats will account for just $12.75 billion of incremental spend through 2028.

Protogiannis called it the most exciting development yet, noting that it helps link real audience behavior to media spend. In an industry increasingly focused on accountability, Nexxen and LG Ad Solutions are showing how advanced tools and human analysis can work together to deliver deeper insights and more confident decision-making.

CTV will rank No. 2 for ad spending growth. Retail media is the only breakout we forecast that we expect to outperform CTV in ad spending growth. CTV will outperform other digital advertising categories (e.g., formats, devices, channels). Retail media and CTV are increasingly overlapping. CTV’s ad spending growth is, in part, a result of retail media’s strength.

From 2024 to 2026, FMN ad spend will grow at a breakneck 106.3% compound annual growth rate (CAGR), per our forecast. While the segment will account for only 0.4% of US digital ad spending in 2026, this growth reflects FIs’ eagerness to monetize their first-party data. Click here to view our full forecast for US financial media network ad spending.

Spend from current retail media network (RMN) advertisers is showing signs of cooling, forcing RMNs to look to non-endemic advertisers outside their existing ad networks for new ad dollars.

Why it’s happening: Platforms face slowing ad growth, rising tech infrastructure costs, and supporting gigantic agency-facing teams—as Meta and others do—is expensive. If platforms’ genAI tools can replace agency support functions—like campaign setup, asset creation, or reporting—it could justify reducing headcount in those areas, turning what were once essential roles into potential cost savings.

By developing offerings for multiple monetization channels across platforms, NBCU is reducing vulnerability to declining revenues and ad spend. While sports will create immediate viewership spikes for traditional TV and streaming, Peacock’s diverse content will build sustainable long-term subscription and advertising revenues independent of sport seasons.