Buying Local: Last Year’s Local Digital Advertising Surpassed $100 Billion (New Report)

Now that digital advertising has taken off globally, it only makes sense for it to now make its mark locally.

The latest annual report from Borrell Associates shows just how far digital advertising has come … and how nearby and omnipresent it already is.

“Local digital advertising cleared a historic threshold in 2024, topping $100 billion and accounting for roughly 70 percent of all local ad spending,” says the report’s executive summary, “an inversion of the 1990s-era hierarchy that once favored print.”

Digital Media Growth Timeline (Source: Borrell)

The report forecasts a near 4% annual growth in local digital spending through 2028, building upon the $15.3 billion in digital revenue that media organizations saw in 2024 (though, as the report says, less than a 10% share of that is held by “85% of nearly 2,600 entities.”

“Digital now supplies a meaningful lift to legacy outlets,” the executive summary says. “For many newspapers it is more than half of ad revenue, while even broadcast TV stations derive a growing — if smaller — portion. Leading operators flip the mix so that two-thirds of their digital dollars come from off-property services such as audience extension banners, streaming video, and resold search.”