Spring has sprung, and with the changing seasons comes a brand new set of advertising trends to consider. While your ad budget and plans are likely in motion, keeping an eye on the market dynamics that affect your campaigns and new avenues for your ad budget is always important.
Courtesy of this new report from Magna, here are three trends that help sum up the state of advertising today and GroundTruth’s key takeaways for each.
Digital Out-of-Home is driving outdoor advertising growth
What we learned:
- Total out-of-home advertising sales are expected to grow by 4.8%, reaching a milestone of $10 billion in total spend.
- Digital Out-of-Home (DOOH) is the key growth factor for total out-of-home ad sales, with a massive double-digit growth of 12% YoY.
- As of spring 2025, DOOH sales are expected to grow to $3.5 billion, or 35% of the total out-of-home spend.
How to Tackle the Trend
As the weather warms, the days get longer, and people spend more time outside, there’s no better time to add DOOH to your omnichannel strategy. DOOH allows advertisers to harness localization better than traditional OOH through geographic, time, contextual (weather, venue), and even limited audience targeting. What’s more, omnichannel strategies that include strategic, location-targeted DOOH can boost the overall campaign visitation rate, as proven recently by breakfast-favorite biscuit brand, belVita, and their omnichannel campaign.
Time spent listening to podcasts is outpacing ad spend
What we learned:
- Digital audio listenership is growing rapidly. Today, the average US adult listens for nearly 1 hour and 24 minutes daily.
- Despite the rapid listenership growth, podcast advertising spend is expected to slow to 9% YoY growth, representing $2.7 billion in total spend.
- 2025 represents podcast advertising’s slowest ad spend growth in recent years, as YoY spend has increased by double or even triple digits in previous years.
How to Tackle the Trend
First things first: 9% spend growth may still be substantial, but it simply doesn’t keep pace with the massive increase in digital audio listenership in recent years. With these factors in mind, now might just be your best opportunity to break the digital audio advertising space. Considering the multiplicative effect that audio has on omnichannel campaigns, it’s not a channel you’ll want to skip.
To introduce audio to your omnichannel mix or launch an audio campaign, we recommend first using a platform that overcomes the common problems with the digital audio channel, namely lack of results attribution. Especially when you’re using multiple channels, it’s vital to know exactly which channel or ad drove which result. Second, you’ll need a robust set of targeting tools, so you can ensure your ad reaches the right audience. For example, GroundTruth’s digital audio advertising platform offers choice between podcast or streaming audio, ad positioning (pre-roll, post-roll, etc.) genre, location, and audience targeting.
Ad-Supported CTV viewership is exploding
What we learned:
- CTV viewership has been growing rapidly over the past few years, but 2025 is already showing a massive leap from even just one year ago.
- 75% of total streaming hours are now ad-supported. In 2024, only 58% of streaming hours were ad-supported.
How to Tackle the Trend
If your omnichannel mix doesn’t feature a CTV component, you’re missing out on one of the fastest growing channels in today’s advertising world. CTV advertising platforms offer combined incredible reach and precision targeting, but the ability to prove measurable results is the key differentiator advertisers should seek in a platform partner. If the platform provider can only prove your CTV ads drove impressions, you’ll never get a clear idea of the impact of your ads. Your CTV platform partner should be able to attribute real-world results, like online and in-store sales or foot traffic, directly back to the ad view. To further clarify your CTV campaign’s impact, your CTV provider should provide visibility into the channels in which your ads are viewed, allowing you better understand where your results are coming from.
GroundTruth offers advertising solutions for Digital Out-of-Home, Digital Audio, and CTV, all with 1-to-1 foot traffic attribution.
If you’re ready to get started, create a GroundTruth Ads Manager account today and launch your first campaign in minutes, or book a demo to see our omnichannel ad platform in action!
