BIA Kelsey released its annual Local Media Forecast for 2015, moving its publication timing to the fall “to align with the annual strategic planning season.” The report breaks out predicted spending growth and decline for a few broad categories, and forecasts the overall local ad-spending market to 2019.
Key growth areas for 2015 are digital in general, mobile, and video.
While today’s release does not pertain directly to the radio and online media industries (more on that coming soon, we are told), the broad trends spell out continued fast migration of ad dollars from traditional analog to digital, and desktop to mobile.
The Local Media Forecast projects a gentle year-over-year growth for all media spending in 2015, of 1.6%, from $137-billion to $139.3-billion. “We expect the pace of growth in the overall local advertising marketplace to moderate through 2019, resulting in a three percent compound annual growth rate,” said Dr. Mark Fratrik, chief economist of BIA Kelsey.
Within that trend, online/digital media buying is predicted to grow from $31-billion to $35-billion, a 13% gain. As digital eats up a bigger piece of the pie, it will represent a quarter of the total $139-billion.
BIA Kelsey projects rampaging growth of the mobile ad-spending sector, from $4.3-billion to $6.6-billion, a rise of 54%.
Video, too, is on the rise, with the predicted spend of $3-billion in 2015 representing a 34% growth from 2014.