Digital ad spending will overtake TV as biggest category by 2017 or 2018, forecasts say
Digital Ad Spending Expected to Soon Surpass TV — Television has lost its longtime grip on advertising budgets as digital ad spending continues to surge, according to some of the advertising industry's …
Context & Ripple Effects
In late 2015, the New York Times reported that industry forecasters saw digital ad spending overtaking TV as advertising's biggest category by 2017 or 2018, ending television's decades-long hold on the top spot in media budgets. That call landed mid-stream: months earlier, eMarketer had projected US display ads passing search spending in 2016, signaling that digital growth was broadening beyond search into brand formats that compete directly with TV.
First-order effects
- TV network sales teams face immediate pricing pressure as brand marketers begin reallocating budgets toward digital formats — video included — that can be bought and measured programmatically.
- Digital publishers and platforms gain leverage with the same brand advertisers who previously treated TV as the default reach buy.
Second-order effects
- As the crossover arrives on schedule — Magna later tallied $209B for digital versus $178B for TV worldwide in 2017 — TV's remaining pricing power concentrates in live sports and events while general entertainment inventory discounts.
- Mobile becomes the engine of the shift rather than desktop: eMarketer's US forecast put mobile at roughly $87B of $129B in digital spend, pushing agencies and brands to reorganize around small-screen creative and measurement.
Third-order effects
- The pattern extends past TV to all legacy media: GroupM projected digital overtaking traditional media overall in 2020 and then crossing half of total US ad spend at $110.1B, making digital the structural center of gravity for the entire ad economy rather than one channel among many.
The trend: Advertising is consolidating around digital platforms milestone by milestone — past TV worldwide, past traditional media in the US, then past half of all spend — with each forecaster confirming the last projection.