Addressable TV advertising also grew in 2019. We define addressable TV ads as targeted TV ads delivered on a home-by-home basis via cable and satellite boxes. We estimate that US addressable TV ad spending increased 37.0% to $2.00 billion in 2019. While addressable’s growth rate is nothing to scoff at, keep in mind that US TV advertising is a $70-billion-a-year industry. Therefore, addressable is just a small portion of it.
Addressable TV is typically constricted to the two minutes of ads per hour that the satellite and cable providers sell themselves. The rest of the inventory is sold by TV networks, and that inventory, which is the bulk of total TV inventory, is not addressable. At multiple advertising events this year, I heard panelists advocate for TV networks opening up to make more of their inventory addressable, and a few consortiums are trying to create momentum around that. But as it stands, addressable has considerable limits.
The strong demand for targeted ads and inventory sold in advance isn’t enough to reverse TV ad spending’s stagnation. However, 2020 will be a relatively bright year for TV ad sellers.
We estimate that US TV ad spending will grow 1.0% to $71.00 billion in 2020. That growth rate is small, but it is an improvement from the 2.9% decline that TV ad spending had in 2019.