Dive Brief:

• TV may command the lion’s share of ad dollars, but it is slowly and steadily losing ground to digital advertising.
• Research from Standard Media Index found ad spending in July up 7% year-over-year, but broadcast spending down 2% and cable spending up 1% compared to digital’s 28% jump.
• The fastest-growing sector was out-of-home ads, such as transit and billboard advertising, up 32%, although the sector is relatively small overall representing less than 5% of all ad dollars spent.

Dive Insight:

Television as an advertising sector probably isn’t overly worried about the latest data from Standard Media Index (SMI), but July research that found ad spending year-over-year saw the largest increase so far in 2015. However, digital ads are trending up while TV is slipping. Meanwhile, social media ads increased 93% and video platform ads were up 63%

Maybe more troubling for TV was SMI’s finding that U.S. advertisers shifted $1.5 billion in national and local TV ad dollars towards digital media between October and June compared to the same period a year earlier. Marketers are trying to reach the coveted millennial sector. According to a recent PwC study on the TV viewing habits of children and teens found that though they are not completely turning away from traditional TV, they do tend to prefer streaming shows.

The sector with the largest overall growth was out-of-home ads that include billboards and transit ads with spending up 32%, although the increase could be skewed by a smaller sample as that sector only accounts for 4.5% of ad spending overall. The out-of-home sector also includes ads with digital elements such as billboards with digital displays.