Annual Investment Blueprint

From Signal to Strategy: Navigating What's Next in Media Investment

A guide to continuous evolution in a media landscape
that never stands still.

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Table of Contents

Inside the Blueprint.

Eleven chapters tracing how U.S. advertisers are rebalancing investment year-over-year, and what the latest data reveals about the next phase of omnichannel strategy.

01Introduction, The $324B Storyp.03 02The Evolution of Omnichannelp.05 03Channels at a Glancep.07 04Shifting Channels & Digital Mixp.09 05The Rise of Socialp.11 06Video's Momentump.13 07The Split Within Mobilep.15 08Traditional Media is Still Essentialp.17 09The Monthly Trajectoryp.19 10Key Takeaways & Actionsp.21 11Conclusion, Optimize Don't Expandp.23 12Methodologyp.25
01 · Introduction
01

Where the
Money is Going

Advertisers entered 2025 with established plans, but the mix of that investment has already begun to shift.

Over the course of the year, total U.S. media investment reached approximately $324 billion, representing a 6% year-over-year increase. While growth remains positive, it has held steady compared to the previous year, signaling a transition from broad expansion to more selective investment strategies.

Digital media continues to dominate overall spend, accounting for over half of total investment, but the latest data shows growth is uneven across channels.

Instead, advertisers are concentrating budgets in formats showing stronger growth and allocation, marking a shift from scale-driven planning to precision-driven execution.

This report explores how those investment patterns are evolving, and what they signal for the rest of the year.

Total U.S. Media Spend
$324B
▲ +6% YoY
Digital Share of Total
56%
$182B of $324B
Leading Digital Channel
+9.9%
Social
Steepest Digital Decline
−3.4%
Mobile App
Advertisers are no longer focused on being everywhere, they are focusing on where investment drives the greatest return.
02 · Evolution of Omnichannel

Growth Holds Steady,
The Mix is Shifting.

Total U.S. media investment continues to expand, moving from +5% growth in 2024 to +6% in 2025. The pace is steady, but the composition of that growth is changing decisively.

Rather than spreading evenly across all channels, advertisers are becoming more selective, prioritizing investments that deliver measurable outcomes. As consumer attention continues to fragment, brands are no longer focused on being everywhere, they are focusing on where investment drives the greatest return.

The result is a more disciplined approach to omnichannel media: one defined by optimization, not expansion.

Total U.S. Media Spend Growth

YoY % change · 2024 vs 2025
◎
From scale...

Last year's playbook was breadth, running every channel, capturing every audience.

◉
...to precision.

Now the same growth rate masks a quieter reallocation toward higher-engagement formats.

◆
Outcome-led mix.

Engagement and measurable performance are the deciding factors for incremental budget.

03 · Channels at a Glance 2024 vs 2025 · All Major Channels

Where the Dollars
Actually Went.

A cross-channel snapshot of YoY spend shows the story isn't digital vs. traditional, it's about where within each category growth is actually concentrating.

YoY Spend by Major Channel

2024 vs 2025 · U.S. Total · $324B
Digital
+2.5%
$182B · largest channel
TV (Net + Cable + Spot)
+14.0%
$103B
OTT
+13.3%
$15.8B
Print
−20.2%
$6.5B
04 · Shifting Channels & Digital Mix

Not All Digital Is Winning.

Digital media remains the largest share of advertising investment, but growth is increasingly uneven. The latest data shows that social media is the fastest-growing major channel, increasing 9.9% year-over-year, followed by online video (+6.7%) and mobile web video (+5.5%). These gains reflect a broader shift toward formats that capture attention through immersive, platform-native experiences.

At the same time, other digital channels are showing signs of stagnation or decline. Search investment fell 3% year-over-year while display experienced a ~3.5% decline, indicating a rebalancing of budgets away from traditional performance channels.

This divergence highlights a critical shift: advertisers are not increasing spend everywhere, they are redistributing budgets toward higher-engagement environments.

05 · The Rise of Social
05

The Rise
of Social.

Mobile and social channels are at the center of this shift in investment strategy.

Social media's 9.9% growth underscores its expanding role as a full-funnel channel, blending discovery, engagement, and conversion into a single environment. Advertisers are increasingly prioritizing these platforms to reach audiences through more dynamic and personalized experiences.

In the latest YoY numbers, social cleared $65.5 billion, surpassing search for the first time and making it the single largest digital line item in the U.S. market.

2025 Social Spend
$65.5B
▲ +9.9% YoY
Share of Digital
~36%
Largest digital channel
Behind Search (2024)
−$3.7B
Trailing by $3.7B
Ahead of Search (2025)
+$4.1B
Now leading
06 · Video's Momentum

Video Is Doing the
Heavy Lifting.

Video is driving significant gains across the mix. Mobile web video grew 5.5% year-over-year, reflecting continued consumer demand for streaming and short-form content across devices. Online video layered on another +6.7%, and together, video formats are quietly reshaping where attention (and budget) lives.

In contrast, traditional mobile web formats remained essentially flat, signaling a broader transition away from static placements toward more immersive, interactive experiences.

Together, these trends reinforce a clear direction: advertising investment is shifting toward visual, mobile-first, and engagement-driven formats.

The next dollar isn't chasing reach. It's chasing attention.

Video Format Growth

YoY % change · 2024 → 2025
07 · Mobile-First Formats

The Split Within Mobile.

Within mobile, the winners and losers mirror the broader digital story. Video and feed-native formats are pulling ahead; static banner and app environments are being rebalanced.

Mobile Format Performance

2025 Spend (B) + YoY % change
▲
Mobile Web Video, +5.5%

Reached $16.2B YoY, the fastest-growing mobile format and third largest overall digital channel.

◆
Mobile Web, flat

Held at $11.1B, signaling a floor on static placements rather than outright decline.

▼
Mobile App, −3.4%

Fell to $9.1B as advertisers reallocated from in-app display toward in-feed and video environments.

08 · Traditional Media

Traditional Media is
Still Essential.

Traditional Media · YoY Change

TV, Print, Radio, OOH · 2025 vs 2024

Traditional media continues to play an important role, but growth remains limited compared to digital channels in many formats. The standout exception is TV, up +14%, supported by premium inventory pricing.

While certain formats maintain stability, overall investment trends suggest that advertisers are becoming more selective in how they allocate budgets across traditional media. Print is down −20%, while Radio (+7%) and OOH (+4%) post modest gains.

Rather than serving as primary drivers of growth, these channels are increasingly evaluated based on their ability to deliver incremental reach and efficiency within a broader omnichannel strategy.

At the same time, the rise of digital video continues to reshape how advertisers approach television, further blurring the lines between traditional and digital investments.

09 · The Monthly Trajectory Monthly Digital Spend · 2024 vs 2025

Inside the Monthly Rhythm.

A month-by-month view of digital investment shows momentum building from January through April, easing into mid-summer, and rebuilding into the year-end push. The pattern reflects how spend tracks the calendar of consumer demand and advertiser cycles, quarterly planning windows, seasonal campaigns, and the holiday surge, rather than moving in a single straight line.

Total Digital Spend · 2024 vs 2025 (Monthly)

Sum of Display, Video, Search, Social, Mobile Web/App, Mobile Video · $B

Monthly Spend · Growth Leaders

Social, Online Video, Mobile Web Video · 2025 · $M
~4.6×
Social pulled away from the stack. By December, monthly social spend reached $6.5B, roughly 4.6× the next-closest digital format. The gap widened nearly every month of 2025.
10 · Key Takeaways

Five Signals for the Back Half of 2026.

01
Growth is real, but precise.

$324B in U.S. media at +6% YoY. The market is expanding, just not everywhere. A mature phase of omnichannel.

ActionAudit channel-level performance against this benchmark, anything growing < 6% is below market pace.
02
Social is now the largest digital channel.

$65.5B and +9.9% YoY. It has surpassed search for the first time on a YoY basis.

ActionIf social is <36% of your digital mix (the new market average), revisit allocation in your next planning cycle.
03
Video formats are compounding.

Online video (+6.7%), mobile web video (+5.5%), and OTT (+13%) are all outpacing the overall market.

ActionReallocate from static display (−3.5%) into video, same intent surfaces, dramatically better growth trajectory.
04
Search & display are recalibrating.

−3.0% and −3.5% respectively. Still foundational, but under pressure from higher-engagement formats.

ActionHold the floor on search/display for incremental reach, but consider shifting growth dollars into video, which is up +5–7%.
05
Traditional media is bifurcating.

TV (+14%) and OTT (+13%) continue to ride a premium-inventory tailwind while print (−20%) is restructuring. Expect budgets to keep moving across the line between "traditional" and "digital" as the categories collapse into a single video economy.

ActionTreat TV + OTT as a single investment line in planning; under-invested brands should accelerate before pricing tightens further.
11 · Conclusion
11

Optimize,
Don't Expand.

The advertising market in 2025 is defined less by rapid expansion and more by strategic refinement.

While total media investment continues to grow, up 6% year-over-year to $324B, that growth is increasingly concentrated in a small number of high-performing channels.

Social media and video formats are leading this next phase, capturing a disproportionate share of incremental spend as advertisers prioritize engagement and measurable outcomes.

At the same time, foundational channels like search and display remain critical, but are being reassessed within a more performance-driven framework.

As the year progresses, success will depend not just on initial planning, but on the ability to continuously optimize and reallocate investment in response to changing market dynamics.

12 · Methodology

How We Measured It.

We undertook a comprehensive review of advertising expenditures across top media channels including digital, out-of-home, paid social, print, radio, linear TV, and OTT. This analysis compared data from ads that ran between 2024 and 2025, aiming to identify changes and emerging patterns in media spending and strategy.* The year-over-year growth numbers in the report have been adjusted for properties that were not covered in both years.

AVOD

Monitored using panel-based collection. Spending estimates are determined using a statistical model, taking into account the platform's valuation of advertising and the weighted sample of data observations across platforms including Discovery+, Disney+, Hulu, Max, Netflix, Paramount+, Peacock, PlutoTV, and Tubi.

Linear TV

MediaRadar uses a proprietary pattern-recognition technology to collect television airings on over 125 broadcast and cable networks. Media spend is estimated using average unit costs by Media, Network, Daypart, Program Genre, and Program.

Mobile

Mobile coverage includes app, web, and video served across 3.8K domains, sub-domains, subdirectories, and 700+ apps. Ad impressions are estimated using a proprietary algorithm based on engagement and experience metrics by site. Coverage is reviewed continuously to add sites, manage for redirects, confirm ad-supported environments, and ensure URLs are still live.

OOH

Out-of-home advertising is a combination of cinema and outdoor formats. Cinema reflects placements served to approximately 3,900 theaters with over 34,000 screens. Outdoor covers nearly all 210 DMAs within all 50 states.

Paid Search

Coverage estimates search activations placed with Google across Desktop & Mobile, Text & PLAs for the top 20,000 domains each month ranked on spending.

Radio

Media spend is estimated through a combination of our observations and third-party data sources and includes a mix of over-the-air signals (25 markets) and webstreams (16 markets).

MediaRadar turns advertising into Actionable Business Intelligence.

Market Intelligence

Where macro change takes shape. Be first to know where dollars move to steer strategy, coverage, and investment with confidence.

Competitive Intelligence

Where spend reveals competitive priorities. Protect and grow share with real-time competitive benchmarks by category, brand, channel, and product.

Commercial Intelligence

Where opportunity drives action. Plan, target, and time outreach with precision via always-on brand & agency news, spend insights, and contacts.

Creative Intelligence

Where strategy becomes visible. Decode ad creative to reveal go-to-market intent through creative trends, messaging shifts, and product launches.

$280B
In Ad Spend
5M
Brands
237K+
Contacts
30+
Media Channels
35M+
Creative Assets

MediaRadar provides marketing intelligence
for the future of the advertising data ecosystem.

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