Global advertising spend against news content is forecast to have fallen by a third in six years.
Marketing research centre WARC estimates that ad spend with newsbrands will be $32.3bn this year, down 33.1% compared to 2019.
Magazine brands have it even harder: ad spend with them is forecast to be $3.7bn in 2025, down 38.6% in the same time frame.
WARC noted that brands continue to have concerns about advertising next to hard news, despite research debunking this as a problem for consumers.
Advertising and marketing firm Stagwell revealed last year that ads appearing next to “non-brand safe” content performed as well as ads in “brand safe” environments by various metrics including purchase intent, trust and values.
As well as these concerns, WARC noted that brands continue to favour platforms like Google and Facebook “for targeted, scalable ads”.
“Future growth hinges on first-party data, trusted environments, and revenue diversification beyond ads – such as subscriptions and direct consumer relationships,” it noted.
Alex Brownsell, head of content at WARC Media, said brands are still becoming “increasingly squeamish about hard news content. Keyword blocking hinders the ability of publishers to monetise newsworthy moments…”
In the US in particular, forecasts predict that advertising revenue with newsbrands will remain flat over the next five years as digital growth fails to offset digital declines.
The research also revealed that just half (51%) of ad spend this year will go to professionally-produced content, across all platforms including TV, audio and print, down from 72% in 2019.
By next year, WARC said, professional media will have been overtaken for ad spend by user-generated content from the likes of influencers and creators who offer brands “low production costs, direct audience engagement, and alignment with platform algorithms”. It added that this trend was being accelerated by the rise of anyone’s ability to create content using AI.
In the UK, WARC said, just 3.7% (£177m in 2024) of total TV ad spend goes on news programming, citing Nielsen data. Retail, travel and finance were the biggest categories.
Meanwhile in the US pharma brands have become “increasingly integral” for news broadcasters, making up 12% of national TV ad sales versus 2% across all media. This was attributed to the “dramatic ageing” of TV audiences, with a median age of 60 in the US.
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