• by Wayne Friedman , September 27, 2021

Although IPG Mediabrands' Magna sees an overall increase of 23% in U.S. advertising revenue for this year -- and a 12% gain in 2022 -- most traditional TV platforms will not fully participate near those hikes.

National TV on broadcast and cable networks -- still the biggest traditional TV platform -- is only expected to grow a modest 7.4% to $40 billion this year.

The second-biggest TV platform -- local TV station advertising -- will slip 4.7% to $17.9 billion. Without those “cyclical events” -- the Olympics and political advertising -- the increase would be 17.9%.

Next year offers another mixed performance. Magna expects national TV on broadcast/cable networks to decline 2.6% -- even with the addition of a 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing and a strongly anticipated midterm political advertising season.

Some of this runs counter to the TV upfront performance that major TV-centric media companies touted, where there were substantial increases of 20% to 30% on the cost-per-thousand viewer pricing.

At the same time, networks only reported slight, single-digit percentage volume gains for the 2021-2022 TV season.

During the upfront selling period, TV network executives talked up the shift of traditional national TV upfront dollars -- anywhere from 20% to 30% -- to new CTV/OTT premium streaming platforms.

Almost all media-selling companies have started premium streamers over the past two years.

Streaming is the big winner for TV this year -- though still smaller in dollar scale. Magna expects connected TV/OTT platforms to see a 34% gain this year to $5.4 billion this year.

In 2022, CTV/OTT advertising revenue is expected to climb another 28.4% -- which would bring the 2022 totals to $6.9 billion in advertising revenue.

Local TV will also gain -- 15.5% -- but this is in contrast to the nearly 5% decline that Magna expects in 2021. Taking out all cyclical event activity, a 2.6% drop is expected.