Local Digital Advertising Enters Its Share-Fight Era

(4 minute read)

For years, local media companies treated digital advertising as the growth engine that would offset pressure on traditional revenue. Radio groups built digital agencies. TV stations added OTT, streaming video, search, social and website services. Newspapers became audience-extension shops. Outdoor companies moved from posters and bulletins into mobile targeting, geofencing and programmatic display.

Now the easy-growth period appears to be ending.

According to Borrell Associates’ 2026 Annual Benchmarking Report on Local Digital Media, year-over-year local digital ad growth has slowed to the low single digits and is projected to fall below 3% by 2029. That would mark the slowest growth pace in nearly two decades.

The implication is significant: digital is no longer a rising tide lifting every local media boat. It is a mature market. And mature markets reward companies that can take share from competitors.

“Digital is mature,” Gordon Borrell, founder of Borrell Associates, said in the report. “Growth won’t come easily now; only companies that take market share from rivals will succeed.”

That sentence should land hard inside every local sales department.

For local media sellers, the message is not that digital is weakening. It is that digital has become normal. Local advertisers no longer view search, social, video, display, streaming and listings as experimental. They are baked into the budget. The question is no longer, “Should I buy digital?” The question is, “Who should manage it, measure it and make it work?”

That changes the sales conversation.

Digital now accounts for about 72% of local ad spending, according to Borrell. Yet no single format dominates. Display, social and video have overtaken search advertising in local markets, suggesting that advertisers and consumers are moving beyond the keyword-driven model that defined much of digital’s first generation.

For local radio, TV, cable, print and outdoor sellers, this creates both pressure and opportunity.

The pressure is obvious. Much of the money is still leaving the market. Borrell estimates that 84% of local digital advertising goes to out-of-market providers, including Google, Meta and national vertical platforms such as Cars.com, Zillow, Monster, Autotrader and Angi/HomeAdvisor.

That means local businesses are spending heavily on digital, but much of the revenue is bypassing the local media companies that know the market, understand the advertisers and maintain relationships with the community.

The opportunity is just as clear. If digital growth is slowing, local media companies can no longer depend on overall market expansion to hit revenue goals. They must win dollars already being spent elsewhere.

That requires a sharper pitch.

A radio seller cannot simply say, “We also do digital.” A TV seller cannot rely on the strength of video alone. A newspaper rep cannot lead only with website traffic. An outdoor company cannot stop at impressions and location data. A digital-only seller cannot compete merely by offering another dashboard.

The new advantage belongs to sellers who can connect local knowledge, audience credibility and business outcomes.

For radio, the opportunity is to pair frequency, personality trust and local reach with digital retargeting, streaming audio, podcast extensions, email and mobile campaigns. Radio can make the case that audio creates awareness and emotional connection, while digital captures response and reinforces the message.

For television, the play is video authority. Local TV stations can use news, weather, sports, streaming, CTV and digital video to offer advertisers a more trusted alternative to anonymous programmatic inventory. In a fragmented video market, local TV can position itself as both a reach vehicle and a brand-safe digital partner.

For cable, the strength is targeting. Cable systems can combine household-level data, streaming inventory, local zone targeting and cross-screen frequency management. The sales opportunity is to help advertisers reach neighborhoods and buyer segments more efficiently than broad digital platforms alone.

For print and local publishing, the opportunity lies in trust, context and community influence. Newspapers, city magazines and niche publications can offer advertisers environments where readers are more engaged and where local brands appear beside credible local content rather than in the endless scroll of national platforms.

For outdoor, the digital shift is not a threat but a bridge. Billboards, transit, place-based media and digital out-of-home can create local visibility that online ads struggle to match. When paired with mobile retargeting, QR codes, search lift studies and geofencing, outdoor can argue that physical presence still matters in a digital-first marketplace.

For digital agencies and local digital sellers, the message is accountability. As advertisers become more skeptical of clicks, impressions and automated reports, agencies that can explain what is working, what is wasting money and how digital supports the full buying funnel will have an edge.

Borrell’s report points to another important development: paid search may be flattening, while AI-driven discovery begins to affect where advertising dollars go. If consumers increasingly ask AI platforms for recommendations rather than typing keywords into search engines, local advertisers may eventually shift some budget away from traditional keyword campaigns.

That does not mean search disappears. But it does mean media sellers need to prepare advertisers for a broader visibility challenge.

Being found on Google was once the core digital objective. Increasingly, businesses will also need to be remembered, recommended, reviewed, ranked and surfaced across AI-driven platforms. That makes brand awareness more valuable, not less.

This is where local media has an opening.

The national platforms are efficient. They are also distant. They can deliver clicks, but they do not always help a local business become known, trusted or preferred in its own market. Local media companies can make the case that performance marketing works best when it is supported by local brand strength.

That is especially important in categories such as auto dealers, banks, credit unions, hospitals, HVAC, legal services, furniture, grocery, restaurants, real estate, roofing and home services. These are not just click businesses. They are trust businesses. Consumers often choose the names they know, the businesses they have heard about repeatedly and the brands that feel established before the need arises.

The winners in this slower-growth digital era will likely be the local media companies that stop selling digital as an add-on and start selling it as part of a market-share strategy.

That means showing advertisers where their money is going now. It means identifying how much is flowing to national platforms. It means asking whether those dollars are building lasting local awareness or simply renting short-term traffic. It means comparing the advertiser’s visibility against competitors. And it means presenting a plan that combines local reach, digital targeting, creative consistency and measurable follow-up.

The local seller’s strongest question may no longer be, “Do you want to buy digital?”

It may be: “How much of your digital budget is helping you win your local market—and how much is simply leaving it?”

In a fast-growth market, sellers can ride momentum. In a mature market, they have to create it.

Local digital advertising has entered that second phase. The money is still there. The growth is slower. The competition is tougher. And the local media companies that win will be the ones that prove they can do more than sell digital products.

They will have to help advertisers take share.

Source: Media Post