Commentary

National/Local TV Ad Silos Will Collapse Before Linear/Streaming Silos Do

by Dave Morgan , Featured Contributor, February 12, 2026

Many of us have been waiting many, many years for advertisers and agencies to view streaming and linear TV channels as a holistic premium video world, where planning, buying, selling and measurement can be truly done together in a fully integrated way.

Historical silos in organization products, planning, buying, workflows and metrics have prevented this from happening. Yes, I know that day in and day out folks in our industry take stages at events or give quotes to trade media that claim to be true silo-busters operating in a real cross-channel way. But we know that, all too often, our industry loves to embrace what people say without a lot of attention to what they actually do.

Managing cross-channel linear and streaming TV media is a great example of that.

We’re an industry that is quite accustomed to silos. It wasn't that long ago that most major buying and selling organizations were structured by daypart, distribution and strategy. Broadcast daytime buyers couldn't touch prime, nor could they touch cable. Direct-response broadcast sellers couldn’t sell broadcast sports, and broadcast sports sellers couldn’t sell entertainment. And don’t even think about what would happen if a USA Network seller tried to sell CNBC.

Well, much of that world has changed. Shifts to streaming, increasing focus on audience-based approaches, and massive reductions in force across teams have finally broken the walls between many roles that had remained mysteriously disparate and siloed.

And national and local linear TV are next, even before linear and streaming come together. As national TV takes on more of an audience-based approach, with increasing focus on strategic target delivery and resulting outcomes, it’s only natural we will see local impressions optimized into national programs in a data-driven way to best meet advertisers’ goals.

Most advertisers had some geographic biases in where their target customers live, and where they can be found at scale cost-efficiently. We have had un-wired networks for a long time, but it was really hard to pull together truly integrated national and local activation and planning without tons of staffing to make it work. But predictive analytics, spot-level activation automation and integrated local and national measurement are changing that game.

Who knows, if Skydance/Paramount isn’t able to buy Warner Bros Discovery, why wouldn’t it buy a large local broadcast company, now that the government doesn’t seem to worry too much about the 40% coverage rule? If that’s the case, then the only way to maximize yield for the various national products and local programs and audiences need to be sold in a truly integrated way, not just sold in separate siloed buckets.

That future is coming fast, I think. What do you think?

10 comments about "National/Local TV Ad Silos Will Collapse Before Linear/Streaming Silos Do".

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Ed Papazian from Media Dynamics Inc, February 12, 2026 at 5:24 p.m.
Dave, for many decades, the TVB and others have made the rounds of national TV advertisers and their agencies suggesting the notion of integrating national TV buys with local ones--the latter weighted by geographic targeting factors. Everywhere they were told that their ideas were well put and very interesting--but over the same period of time the average TV station has seen its share of national spot business dwindle relative to its local ad revenues--not increase.

Several factors are involved.

One is the changing nature of national advertisers. At the outset and for about 20 years, they were heavily cigarette, automotive and packaged goods and they invested in spot TV. But now there are many new players who think national and are much less concerned with geographc targeting. Worse, few of these companies have a sound market by market sense of what works, what the ROI might be if they increased local ad spend on top of national buys, ,etc.

Another issue concerns the look of the buys and their merchandisability. Increasingly, the new breed of national advertiser is concerned about the context and associations or imagry that national buys on well publicized programs gives them. In contrast, buying various amounts of GRPs locally in syndicated game shows or talk shows or news----all reaching mostly old consumers---- isn't all that inviting a prospect. And let's not forget that the local market ratings are primitive compared to their national counterparts.

Finally, national TV is "fun"--the upfront portion, in particular. And buyers often advance their careers by seeking jobs with the big time sellers they befriend and do business with. But spot buying isn't "fun"--it's a grind. If you try to convert a national time buyer into a spot buyer for a lot of his/her time, you will meet resistence. They will assign the spot part to beginners and trainees and do the more interesting --"fun" --- buying themselves.

My point is, yep, in theory, you are right. But real world considerations will probably work against it--even if I happen to agree with you.

Reply

Dave Morgan from Simulmedia replied, February 13, 2026 at 5:52 a.m.

Great points Ed, Spot on. I think that two major factors drove the three poins you mentioned. One, the major holdcos were consolidating their positions and pushed hard to make national a simple of a wholesale buy as they could, and adding in local spots added way to much compliexity and friction and so they pushed back. Two, the national sellers didn't want the local station owners to get into their swim lane, to they pushed hard and, among other things, worked hard to keep the national and local measurements very separate.
On both of the above counts, we now see less capacity to resist and, relative to the second, some real incentives to embrace rather than resist. It will be interesting to watch.

Ed Papazian from Media Dynamics Inc, February 13, 2026 at 8:11 a.m.

Thanks Dave.

But I need to elaborate on this. When I point out that many national advertisers don't have a locasl market strategy, that's not because the large media buying agencies have pushed them away from spot TV as it's more expensive to handle. If a brand wants to use spot TV it pays a higher fee that covers the buying/servicing costs and yields a profit to the buying agency. The problem is high turnover of brand management ---hence ignorancec about local market conditions and sales potentials---and a lack of interest in tailoring media weight for each of 200 local TV markets. Many advertisers don't have a feel for whether such weightings would pay out--so they don't bother.

Regarding the quality of local market ratings, this is not because the networks wanted it so. It's because of the costs of coming even close to the national level re panel size at the local level are too great for the stations as a group to bear relative to the small amounts of national ad dollars invovled.

Dave Morgan from Simulmedia replied, February 13, 2026 at 9 a.m.

Ed, excellent point about the challenge at the client side and the turnover at brand management as a key issue that has slowed down more progressive media strategies like integratinig national and local TV media guys. However, the other cross-current that is happening at the client (and agency) is the ascension of digital buyers and marketers who view media first through an audience and impression lense and don't spend much time feeling constrained by the disparate distrubtoin paths that get the ad to that person.

Jack Wakshlag from Media Strategy, Research & Analytics, February 13, 2026 at 3:23 p.m.

Dave you are spot on. Buyers can go local without the hassle of dealing with local tv stations and all the work involved. It's just easier to ask Google or Facebook etc to purchase by geography using a few regions instead of hundreds of markets and thousands of stations -- and likely close to being as effective. Save the money time and effort and spend it on ads instead.

Dave Morgan from Simulmedia replied, February 13, 2026 at 3:46 p.m.

Jack, yep. Digital streamers sell geo ads all of the time. Plus, national programmers are pushing hard thise days on national linear addressable, so there is some movement. Just hopoding that the big M&A deals will, literally, force the linear TV silos to break down much faster.

Ed Papazian from Media Dynamics Inc, February 13, 2026 at 7:15 p.m.

Guys, are you saying that a national TV advertiser who, somehow, develops a sensible targeting strategy that calls for certain amounts of GRPs in each market or more refined geographic area should forget about buying time on local TV stations--or spot cable---- and use You Tube and Meta instead to save the hassle of TV time buying while still getting the assumed benefits of geographic targeting?

But what about measurement ? Do you simply trust the sellers to deliver what's promised? And what about commercial positionning --and zapping?And how about the kinds of program or editorial content your commercials will be adjacent to? Last, but not least, what about all of those ad attentiveness studies that show social media as well as You Tube performing at far lower levels than linear TV or CTV? Media Post just did a report on one of them.

Are all "impressions" really of equal value?

Jack Wakshlag from Media Strategy, Research & Analytics replied, February 13, 2026 at 9:31 p.m.

All impressions are not equal but nothing has induced advertisers to make adjustments save attributions they can get. From digital. All I'm saying is the work of allocating budgets to stations within markets across 209 DMAs is immense and few actually do that anymore. Should they?

Ed Papazian from Media Dynamics Inc, February 14, 2026 at 7:59 a.m.

Jack, it all depends on the situation a brand finds itself in. For many national brands precision geotargeting may be overkill or they rely on local store advertising to carry the ball regionally. For others, which target very afflujent consumers or certain ethnic groups, local GRP weighting laid in on top of national umbrella media buys can make sense.

As for execution, you need certain data. First, a pretty good indication of sales potential in each area. Second, an indicadion of how your national buys generate GRPs in each area. Third, you need cost per rating point data for each area for the kinds of TV you would use locally.

Given that info--which you would need anyway--even if you went to You Tube or Meta--it's a faiurly simple computer exercise--quite routine, I might add for those advertisers who do this not in all markets but in markets they consider key areas. The computer figures out what the GRPs will be in each area for the national buy. Then it tries to add local GRPs--as cost efficiently as possible--in those markets that are underdelivering media weight relative to the desired amount. Then, the buys are made locally, to the reqired add-on GRP levels. As for markets where the national buys, themselves, overdeliver, there's little you can do about that.

Dave Morgan from Simulmedia replied, February 14, 2026 at 8:27 a.m.

Jack, I agree that allocating budgets across 209 DMAs and then negotiating, trafficking, posting and measuring it as a national campaign was virtually impossible even a few years ago, as much because of social engineering issues, not just mismatched systems, lack of automation, lack of standards, etc. However, today, the corporate and organizational resistance is melting and systems built in the data-driven linear world for national can be adapted to incorporate local broadcast pretty efficiently. Many of us have been doing it in some ways for some time, particularly relative to the diginets, which have been pretty agressive about being included in national programs. Finally, pricing flexibility and better management of preemption issues at local stations is also opening up.
Thus, I agree with Ed that integrating the local broadcast spots into national programs is not only essential for competition with the digital players, but is essential for upping TVs game in maximizing value for advertisers. Not only can hybridizing the campaigns now be done, it must be done.