Leading Local Insights
Leading Local Insights
Inside the $182B Local Ad Market: Key Trends for 2026
Local advertising is entering one of its most complex and opportunity-rich years yet. In this episode of Leading Local Insights, BIA Founder & CEO Tom Buono and BIA’s senior analysts expand on insights from BIA’s 2026 Local Advertising Trends Report to examine what’s shaping the $182 billion local advertising market.
The conversation highlights where growth is emerging, including CTV and cross-platform video, digital out-of-home, and national brands leaning further into local markets. The team also discusses which business verticals are gaining momentum and what that means for sales strategies.
The episode also touches on the 2026 midterm election cycle, with the BIA analysts offering perspective on how political advertising may influence demand and inventory in select markets as the year unfolds.
Grounded in BIA’s latest trends analysis, this episode delivers clear, data-backed insights to help local media leaders navigate change and identify opportunity in 2026. To download the full 2026 Trends Report, visit www.bia.com/2026trends.
Welcome. And thanks for joining us for the first Leading Local Insights podcast of 2026. I'm Tom Buono, founder and CEO of BIA Advisory Services, and today I'm joined by members of our analyst team to talk about what's happening in local advertising. Just before the holidays in December, we released our annual trends report, one of our most popular industry reports. In that we talked about $182 billion of local advertising as an opportunity for all of those on this call and all serving this marketplace. It highlights 10 key trends shaping local advertising today. What we are seeing is that local advertising is moving fast right now. Audiences are spread across more screens than ever. New platforms keep popping up, and both national and local advertisers are rethinking where they're where they are spending their money. At the same time, we're seeing national brands leaning into local. Connected TV and OTT are changing how video gets planned and bought. Digital out of home continues to build momentum, and political advertising and major event advertising are tightening inventory in certain markets. At the same time, AI is starting to influence how campaigns are planned, activated, and optimized. In a market like this, clarity really matters. That's what we're hoping to bring to you today in this discussion and with our clients throughout 2026. With that, let's get started. So first up is Rick Ducey. Rick is a managing director with BIA. He oversees our strategic consulting and works with a lot of clients at the executive level on a whole range of different issues. And today I'd like you to talk a little bit, Rick, about CTV OTT. You're really the expert in this space. Can you talk about what we're seeing for the coming year and the trends driving the growth?
Rick Ducey:Sure, Tom. Thanks. And um welcome everybody. It's wonderful to have this chance to get together, share some of our data, some of our insights about what's happening with local, which is a happening place these days. And there's a few places in terms of media channels where the activity is particularly, I guess, exciting and possibly even turbulent, you might say. And CTV, connected TV, and OTT definitely is one of those areas. Just first briefly, we say CTV slash OTT. There's different kinds of streaming video, and in this media channel, we're talking about premium video, full-length video. For CTV specifically, ad impression inventory that is on a TV set. So one of the things we've done is when we look at local and video, we have a couple of different ways of looking at it. One is the local TV marketplace for ads targeting local audiences. And in that, we include over-the-air broadcast TV stations, uh, MVPT, the cable operators, and now CTV. So those are three media channels targeting the TV set as the display device for ad inventory. And of course, streaming, you can watch premium content on your TV set. You can also watch it on your iPad, your phone, whatever. But those are different kinds of ad inventory. So mostly when we say TV, Tom, as you know, we're focused on it on the TV set. So I'll just pick a couple of uh data points there to highlight what we're seeing. First of all, high growth. Now, CTV's been coming off a small base. So to say high growth on a relative basis, the percentages look good. But as the absolute number of dollars spent in local CTV gets bigger, uh the percentages start to drop because the denominator gets bigger, obviously. But still we're seeing some really exciting movement uh compared to some of the other channels that are either aren't moving or are going backwards. So in 2005, we figured CTV targeting local audiences closed out at about $3.3 billion, excluding political spending, which didn't matter that much for 25. Now we're in 26 midterm year, um, and we're expecting CTV spending, not including political spending, which will be substantial, um, to go up about 10% to $3.6 billion. And if we look at this in a context, if we look at that calculation of local TV and TV being sort of broadly defined here as broadcast stations, uh MVPDs, and CTV uh targeting that TV set, um, the share of that spending from CTV has increased from about just under 14% in 2024 to almost 19%. Uh so pretty huge growth we're expecting in in 2026. Again, um if we look at how the dollars are spent, broadcast TV stations still get the lion share, but the fast riser, and we expect to continue to rise fast, is going to be CTV. So there's a couple of quick stats and a little bit of context, Tom.
Tom Buono:Yeah, thanks, Rick. You know, it always comes down to selling. So can you give us uh one key opportunity for local sellers packaging OTA with CTV and digital video?
Rick Ducey:Sure. I mean, if you look at the ecosystem and then CTV, you mentioned Tom, it it's fragmented generally, um, you know, media. We track, I think we have been tracking 16 different media uh channels, and we're increasing that number just because of how things are breaking out in the market. Um, we we need to have more targets that we're that we're tracking. And that may be hard from an analyst perspective, uh, but it's also, of course, hard from a brand perspective. The marketers are kind of going a little bit crazy. How do we find our you know, target groups and across all these different media channels? And how can we orchestrate our brand messaging from a brand level? And then as we get into smaller regional businesses, they're more performance-oriented. You know, how do we reach our target consumer bases geographically? And a lot of times the lift is very impressive when you geo-target uh campaigns for various uh reasons. You're finding people where they live, you're able to do geographically relevant content when you're doing dynamic ad insertion, things like that. So now these three uh video media um targeting a TV set, what brands want to do, agencies want to do, uh, is to go cross-platform. We want to get video impressions in front of our target group in whatever screen they're looking at. And if we can do that in a relevant way in our journey to purchase and use each of those media differently, I mean you can use the paradigm of the funnel, top of the funnel branding, maybe that's broadcast TV. And then you get into CTV, which is a lot more targeting. You can layer on a lot of signals to get that message to the target audience you want to get to. And you can see some performance, you have different optimization capabilities, and even into other forms of digital like social video, uh, where you can really get some engagement, uh, get some brand halo effect uh from some of the things happening there. And again, drive down to very um concrete KPIs like uh retail foot traffic, uh, web form fills, things like that. So uh for a selling strategy, there's a lot of things that media sellers can bring to the market that is in demand. And the challenge is to do that in a way that's orchestrated, it makes sense, and all the different parts and pieces fit together, and you can see that with the metrics and data you're you're getting. So you can optimize and steward that campaign and drive it to the outcomes that the clients want. And those are a big set of challenges, but the industry has been working hard on it and getting some good solutions.
Tom Buono:Good. All right, Rick, thanks for that. Uh, we're gonna turn to Steve Passwaiter. Steve is an advisor to BIA and has worked with us for many, many years and a lot of other media companies over time. Steve, let's talk a little bit about out of home. It seems to be having a real moment now, especially with digital screens and programmatic buying. Uh, can you just share a little bit on the growth of out of home and the vertical advertisers leaning into out of home this coming year?
Steve Passwaiter:Sure, Tom. Uh, you know, 2025 was really the year of legal. Uh legal firms and uh the out-of-home industry got a lot closer to one another during uh 2025. Now that will likely continue unabated into 2026, but it'll be joined by restaurants and amusement parks and real estate. Uh these are categories that uh the BIA forecast uh has uh putting more money towards outdoor, and there are plenty of reasons for that. Uh Senan, I thought uh uh you might have some uh thoughts on exactly why those categories, uh what's special about them and how they uh you know how how outdoor fits uh what they're trying to do.
Senan Mele:Yes, Steve. Um what we are seeing is that amusement park, restaurants, and real estate development, as well as uh legal services, as you've mentioned, they all depend on being top of mind at the moment uh someone is nearby. So out of home tend to excel at capturing attention uh close to the point of decision, whether it's choosing where to eat, which attraction to visit, and which firm to call. So, as you've mentioned, um as food traffic rebounds and stabilizes, uh, advertisers will naturally put dollars behind media that influence physical movement. What we are also seeing is that in categories like QSA, full service restaurants, and um legal services, digital channels can become saturated and increasingly expensive. So, out of home offers a great way to um to get high risk at cost efficiency and at scale, especially in dense urban and commuter markets. Uh the other thing I will add here is that as customer acquisition costs rise online, brands are reallocating budget to channels that deliver broad awareness and incremental reach. And out-of-home plays a big role in that.
Steve Passwaiter:Thanks. Thanks, Senan. Yeah, I appreciate your uh your thoughts on that. I think all that's incredibly true.
Tom Buono:Steve, can you uh expand a little bit about the opportunity for out-of-home to use data and digital capabilities to compete more directly with channels like CTV and and social?
Steve Passwaiter:Sure, Tom. I'd actually reframe that maybe just a little bit into thinking of out-of-door as more of an amplification media that actually uh you know uh plays well with others, uh, like we all used to get graded with uh when we were in school. Um that's really it, because outdoor is really an amplification media, sort of some of what uh Senan was uh was adding before. It does have reach, and that reach can be very broad, but at the same time, it also has geographical constraints that can be put around it. Now, this is really great stuff for, you know, I think the folks in retail media have figured out that uh, you know, outdoor is uh a really interesting place to get the message out of the store and and add reinforcement. And out of home does really add frequency, but does so in a non-obtrusive way. It is a it's a it's a non-skippable media, which you gotta love in this uh day and age, but it really limits, you know, I think both CTV and social have a bit of a burnout problem. Uh, you know, there's too much frequency, you see too much of the same thing. Outdoor really doesn't do that. And I think there's a, you know, where data's concerned, there's all kinds of studies about the effectiveness of out of home and how out of home really makes the dollars that are invested in CTV and social work that much harder and really adds a real boost to what they're you know, what they're what they're what they're trying to do. And then lastly, you know, I think where social is concerned, out of home, and we see advertisers putting various social elements into their outdoor ads, uh, really allows an expansion of those campaigns into social and gets more references, but at no additional cost. And that's a beautiful thing about it. So these are, you know, I think some of the things that out of home has, uh, you know, these unique attributes about it that are giving it that moment uh that everybody in the ad world is talking about at the moment.
Tom Buono:Yeah, for sure. And certainly on the digital side. Uh let's go to Celine. Celine Matthiessen is a vice president with BIA, works closely with a number of clients uh related to competitive intelligence. Celine, can you talk a little bit about national brands going local in 2026 from your perspective? Uh what's actually changing on the ground?
Celine Matthiessen:Oh, sure, Tom. I mean, you know, national brands and brands have been in local for a long time. However, you know, they always kind of view it as a tactical add-on. Um, but you know, for 2026, um, it's shaping up to be a highly competitive year for national brands and local, um, where advertisers are leaning in harder into channels that deliver measurable market level performance. And it's like Rick said, especially with uh CTV OTT with that level of targeting and all the data, they're really leaning into that in the local market space. Um, one of the big areas that's driving that growth are all the sporting events coming up in 2026, the winter Olympics, and then the FIFA World Cup. I'm down in Houston. And so, you know, we hear all about that. Um, those are primarily uh primarily being monetized, that inventory is being monetized in local.
Tom Buono:Yeah, it'll be an exciting year for all of that. Um you help clients uh craft local sales strategies, Celine. Uh, you know, what's the biggest opportunity to add value?
Celine Matthiessen:Um it's definitely bundling CTV OTT with digital inventory and then localizing creative, which is getting so much easier now with all the new tools that are out there, uh, to align with the national campaign and you know, brand messaging. Uh local sellers can move from being viewed as a tactical add-on by these brands to a strategic growth partner.
Tom Buono:Yep, for sure. All right, let's go to Mark Dugan. Mark is a senior director with the firm. He works on the forecasting side and and really uh a lot of clients uh with briefings and helping them with their concerns. Mark, let's talk about you know what's happening uh with the different business verticals and spending from our trends analysis. What are we seeing there and where's the momentum?
Mark Dugan:Uh sure, Tom. Uh some that Steve has already mentioned, but for um 2026, three categories are really um jumping up the page uh real estate, leisure and recreation, and restaurants. Uh real estate's out in front, uh, with followed by leisure and recreation, then uh restaurants. And uh the local sellers should be very, these should be the first verticals that they're really looking at and building their prospecting plans around with a noticeably more digital and performance targeted strategy than in years past. Uh, we'll start with real estate, and the local land spend uh in real estate is expected to climb about 5.8% in 2026, fueled by uh the easing interest rates and the buyer's journey that's much more online and uh research heavy uh than it has been in the past. The uh real estate marketers are already thinking digital first, uh search listings platforms, social, CTV video, plus uh local targeting to stay in front of the uh in-market buyers. Uh following uh leisure and recreation uh with the local spend projected to grow about 4.3% in 2026. And a lot of that momentum is coming from online gambling, uh the shifting travel behaviors, and a rising demand from uh consumers for experiences instead of just stuff. Um the categories becoming increasingly sophisticated, um, precision targeting and performance media, they're going after highly defined behavior and interest groups, the betters, the frequent travelers, the event goers. Um and then there are restaurants, which are set to boost local ad spend by about 3.7% in 2026. Uh the consumers are really, you know, they're now value-seeking diners and have a weakening brand loyalty and are um pushing the restaurant marketers to really turn up the volume and get sharper at the local level, uh, moving more local. The competitive pressure and promotion-driven consumers are really moving more dollars into digital, social, CTV, and also have tight geographic and audience targeting um to try to win that next visit.
Tom Buono:Yeah, really a changing business. Uh thanks, Mark. Let's go to Saint An. Uh Saint On is uh uh uh data scientist. Uh he is our vice president for forecasting, and he's been with us about a year and is really doing a great job of taking a lot more inputs and really making our modeling more sophisticated for forecasting. So, Senan, let's talk a little bit about political. It's gonna be an intense midterm cycle coming up. Uh, what are we seeing? What is our forecast saying about political advertising?
Senan Mele:Yeah, absolutely. And um, thank you, Tom. So there are a few very important points to make when it comes to political um advertising in 2026. And the first point I will focus on here is that 2026 will be intense in terms of political advertising, but it will also be unevenly distributed. And what we mean here is that uh political spend will be highly concentrated in competitive markets rather than spread evenly across the country. And this is being driven primarily by all of the Senate, House, gubernatorial, and ballot races happening across the country, meaning buyers should expect pressure to be located. Localized rather than uniform. The second point is that political advertising remains video-led, with TV OTA as the anchor. And in that light, BI is forecasting roughly 3.9 billion in political TV OTA spend, making it the single largest political medium by a wide margin. It's also important to note that this number is focusing on our 2026 only forecast, where we are looking into where dollars are expected to land in that year, not the full multi-year cycle. So while BIA's uh OTA estimate is modestly below the 2022 midterm peak, that does not signal um a weaker video demand, especially in a midterm year where voters tend to skew older. And of course, that aligns closely with uh broadcast TV viewership. Now, the third important point uh I'll want to make here is that um the it is really the changes in how video is executed because campaigns are no longer relying on linear alone. They are increasingly planning TV OTA alongside CTV and YouTube as a part of a single video strategy. So the way it will work is that OTA will deliver skill, trust, and rapid reach, while CTV and YouTube will provide incremental reach, frequency management, and precision, particularly among um code light and harder to reach voters. So the main takeaway and the answer to your question, Tom, is that political uh advertising in 2026 has not weakened. It has broadened across screens. OTA will, of course, remain the foundation, especially in competitive markets, while CTV and YouTube are now core layers that are used to extend and optimize that wish. And together they will define what political video will look like in 2026. But um one thing uh I I want to also say is actually given uh the concentration that we've just discussed, I have a quick question for Steve. Um, which is in which markets uh he thinks buyers should expect to face the most pressure, especially when it comes to higher cost and tighter availability.
Steve Passwaiter:Gosh, I thought you'd never ask. Um thanks. Uh yeah, okay. So yeah, maybe I have a little bit of a background here with this, but um there are uh I think your point about uh unevenly distributed is uh is a is a crucial one because that's gonna be the case. There are gonna be some places where you're just gonna struggle to get out of the way, uh, and there are other places where you're you're really not gonna see much. And I'll I won't focus on all of them, but just a few of them that I think are are are kind of interesting. You know, I look at North Carolina where there is an uh open Senate seat. The Democratic candidate is the former governor of the state, probably the strongest Democrat that uh they've put up against a Republican in in some time. And anybody who knows anything about North Carolina Senate seats knows that they're a fist fight and they're expensive fist fights. Uh, I don't think there's any question that race is headed for the half billion dollar mark, might even might even go higher than that, just based on past spending. So certainly anything that you try to buy in North Carolina, any market, but particularly, you know, Raleigh Durham and Charlotte particularly are going to be really heavy. Uh Raleigh will also get a lot of money from uh North Carolina One on the House side, where the uh state legislature redrew the district to draw more Republicans in. That has been a swing state, uh pardon me, swing seat for quite some time in a swing state. But um that's gonna make this one the Democrats will want to defend uh Congressman Davis, and the Republicans will do everything they can to get rid of him. Um I also look at places like Michigan, uh, where there's both an open governor's seat and an open Senate seat, and a few House races that always turn out to be kind of interesting. They're on the fringes of Detroit. Um about $200 million got spent on a Senate seat a couple of years ago. The one that uh Elissa Slotkin, Senator Slotkin, now occupies uh the governor's race uh will will also be uh an expensive fist fight through Michigan, and Michigan is a very narrow state in both directions. I would expect that Detroit uh is going to be incredibly difficult to buy at multiple times during this year. Uh look at Texas with a redraw of the congressional districts, and uh what will likely be a very nasty primary fight on the Republican side between uh Senator Cornyn and Attorney General Paxton and Congressman Hunt uh from the Houston area. Those three are going to duke it out. That's gonna get loud, noisy, and expensive. Uh, and then we've got a Senate seat. There's also a primary on the Democratic side uh between uh Tel Rico and uh Congresswoman uh Jasmine Crockett, who is a bit of a lightning rod to uh say the least. And uh so should should be kind of fun. Celine, you know if you're gonna get to see a lot of it uh this year where you're sitting, and um it'll it'll be kind of tough, uh it'll be interesting. And and of course, Georgia. Uh Georgia has become open governor's seat uh with Governor Kemp uh bowing out after two terms and uh Senator Osoff uh fighting for his first re-elect. So uh again, Atlanta, um you know, good luck. You may need it trying to buy Atlanta if you're not a political advertiser. And and I'll kind of throw this one in here at the end, but look at Maine. Um, even a market like you know, like markets like Portland and Bangor, um, there's an open governor's seat, and Susan Collins is running for re-election. That is always a difficult and expensive proposition. I mean, she spent $150 million back in uh 2020, back in 2020, the last time she ran. So nine figures in Maine where there's less than a million registered voters. So do some math on that. That's pretty expensive. Um, there's also an open seat in the banker market, which is Maine 2, which has been represented by Jared Golden for the last few years. That's a district that Trump has won. All three times he's won, but they've elected a uh moderately conservative uh Democratic congressperson. He is not running. So that puts more pressure, even in you know, a mid-sized and uh smaller market like that. And we could talk about you know, Ohio Senate, Ohio Gov, we could talk about California where you know uh the districts are being redrawn. Bottom line is you better keep track of what is going on politically in these markets if you've got to buy anything uh this year between an accelerated primary schedule and a record midterm. It is going to um, you know, this isn't anything new, but the scale of the political advertising just refuses to go away. And this uh has been going on since Citizens United. It kind of opened the floodgates for all this money to come flowing into the system. And we keep some of us kind of keep wondering when that upward movement is going to go away, and the answer seems to be not anytime soon. So we probably will be having the same conversation in 2028.
Tom Buono:Well, uh I think we're gonna have this conversation later in the year on one of our other podcasts because there's a lot to cover related to political advertising. So thank you, Steve, on that. Uh I think overall, you know, this has been pretty informative. Uh and before we close out, uh, I'd like to have Mark tell people where they can get our trends report.
Mark Dugan:Sure, Tom. Um for any of our Advantage clients, uh the report can be accessed and downloaded from the uh guides and insights section in Advantage, or anyone that's not a client uh can access the full report at www.bia.com/2026trends. And you can find the full report there um for your own use. Great.
Tom Buono:Thank you, Mark. Well, thank you all. I mean, uh that's all the time we have for today. Uh I want to thank the analysts for the work they do every day uh to bring clarity to a more complex local advertising marketplace as we've just talked about. Uh, and their insights is what make these conversations possible. If you're a BIA client and you want to go deeper into the data behind today's discussion, uh you can tune to our databases, either BIA Advantage or BIA Media Access Pro. Uh if you're not a client, uh we'd love to have you as a client. So you can reach out to us, email us at advantage at BIA.com. We appreciate uh you joining us today and hope that you'll tune in again soon. We do have a robust schedule of podcast planned for this year, and our next one is going to dive even deeper into vertical. So stay tuned. We appreciate you being with us and look forward to continuing the conversation we started here today throughout the year. Thanks very much.