Streaming's Ascent Leaves Linear TV's Ad Dominance in the Dust

A new WARC report reveals a dramatic collapse in linear television’s advertising power, with its share of global ad spend plummeting from over 41% in 2013 to just 12.4% today. The forecast predicts spending will sink to a low not seen since 2005, confirming a massive power shift as both audiences and ad dollars flee to streaming.

• The great migration: The audience has already left the building. Streaming now dominates American living rooms, with connected TV commanding nearly half of all viewing time, per Nielsen. What’s left of linear’s audience is rapidly aging out. In the UK, weekly reach has dropped by 10 percentage points since 2021, according to Ofcom, while in the US, viewers aged 16-24 spend just 81 minutes with traditional TV daily, a stark contrast to the two-plus hours watched by older demographics, based on GWI data.
• Rise of the new guard: As the old guard fades, new titans are consolidating power. YouTube, with $36 billion in ad revenue, is pursuing sports rights and sitcoms to become the new default, while platforms like Roku now control the gateway to content for millions, giving them leverage to take 15-30% of ad inventory from channels on their OS.
• From reach to results: The fundamental currency of TV advertising is changing. Global retail media spend is projected to overtake the entire TV market next year, forcing a reckoning over how to connect ad exposure to actual sales and prove that data, not just reach, is now king.

Linear TV's decades-long reign as the undisputed king of advertising is over. The future belongs to the platforms that control the audience, the operating system, and the data that proves their worth. The ad industry's measurement crisis isn't limited to TV; a new report shows many marketers still can't prove the ROI of their influencer campaigns. Meanwhile, the global ad market isn't a monolith, with regions like Australia showing surprising resilience in traditional media, including growth in out-of-home and cinema advertising.