What does media spend look like for 2026? It could be worse — and it might be
By Michael Bürgi • January 8, 2026 •
Ivy Liu
You may not know it or have felt it, but 2025 was actually a pretty good year for the U.S. ad economy. At least the way Brian Wieser tells it. But he warns that 2026 will be only about half as good, and will get worse as the year rolls on.
The media industry analyst and principal of the Madison & Wall consultancy, along with managing director Luke Stillman, forecast that U.S. ad revenue will grow 6.6% in 2026 (excluding political ads, which will be significant thanks to midterm elections), following an 11% surge this year, which Stillman termed “one of the best years we have on record… it’s pretty much the best environment we’ve seen in a decade.”
In a recent webinar in which he and Stillman presented their reasons for the projected numbers, Wieser noted that one reason for the strong 2025 is the rise of newer advertisers like dating services, among others. But he pointed out some of the concerns and unknowns for 2026.
“We are mindful of a lot of concerns that we have, and anyone should have about reasons why the economy could go over the cliff,” said Wieser. “It hasn’t happened yet — that doesn’t mean it won’t. Risks are elevated on so many levels, and yet the current environment is good despite — not because of — the current economic policies we see in the United States.”
Projections from other prognosticators is a bit more upbeat, with WPP’s Business Intelligence unit predicting 7.4% growth for the year, and Morgan Stanley analysts shooting for 10% in 2026.
Jay Pattisall, vp and senior agency analyst at Forrester, noted that recent research the consultancy did in asking 1,000 marketing professionals about their concerns, showed their top marketing challenge, at 33%, is measuring the ROI of marketing efforts, while the second biggest challenge at 24%, is managing budget constraints.
“The overall uncertainty in markets, along with things like the trade policy, that have exacerbated the uncertainty, has made it difficult for organizations to plan and commit budgets,” explained Pattisall. “Consequently, marketers and their agency partners are feeling held hostage in some respects to this uncertainty and inability to plan.”
Some media agencies report their clients have not yet even registered full-year media budgets for 2026, choosing instead to mete out budgets quarter by quarter. That is practically unheard of in the media business, but it could be the new reality so long as economic uncertainty maintains its chokehold on the U.S. economy.
It all translates to the need for media agencies to prepare to ask media partners for even more flexibility in placing ad dollars into campaigns — a far easier task for investing in digital and lower-funnel performance spending, but not as easily accomplished through branding efforts on TV.
And some longtime category stalwarts to linear TV, notably pharmaceutical and other health advertising, are starting to shift into more flexible options. Pharma “has been a robust spender in the marketplace, but I think we’re seeing some shifts there, as they try to soften their linear approach and really move into CTV and streaming,” said one holding company head of investment who spoke on condition of anonymity. Meanwhile, other categories may pull back altogether. “Autos and financial, you’re going to see probably spending will be flat to slightly down,” said the buyer.
Complicating matters even more, some of the billions of marketing dollars earmarked for 2026 have already been placed in high-profile events like the upcoming Winter Olympics, the Super Bowl and this summer’s FIFA World Cup. There will be few opportunities for scatter buys in these super events. And political advertising, which is forecast to blow past $11 billion, making it a record year for midterms, is still bought at lowest unit rates, which doesn’t help media companies who would rather be selling their inventory and ad space at higher rates.
Meanwhile, it’s safe to expect that commerce media/retail media, search, social and influencer marketing will all help to suck up more of the marketing dollars spent, while traditional TV will continue to shrink alongside print media and the traditional side of OOH — digital OOH is actually growing at a healthy clip.
Those growing categories are “reflective of this more than a decade shift we’ve seen towards lower-funnel spending, towards performance focused advertising,” said Madison & Wall’s Stillman. “Every year, CMOs have more and more pressure to point to every dollar of spend and say, ‘I don’t just think that’s working, I can quantify exactly how hard that’s driving my business and how many dollars of, you know, sales I generated’.”
