Screens, streets and live crowds: where advertising money moved in 2025

Updated November 2026

In 2025, forecasters expected television to shrink while streaming and digital out-of-home grew: dentsu had total television at -1.8% and connected television at +10.9%. This page follows the audience through screens and streets, then asks what is left for a character on a stage.

The screen side: television falls, streaming rises

Start with the living room. dentsu's June 2025 forecast had total television, broadcast included, at -1.8% for the year, while connected television was expected to grow 10.9%. Magna's June update, reported by TheWrap, had television at -5% and radio at -1%. It also sized ad-supported streaming at about $23 billion of $153 billion in worldwide long-form video advertising, around 15%, and 20% to 25% in the United Kingdom and the United States.

Put simply, a growing share of screen time is sold by auction and by algorithm, with fewer fixed slots and fewer shared moments.

On the same split, Magna counted a fall of 3% for traditional media owners to $264 billion, and dentsu a 68.4% digital share. Neither is a view about audiences, only about where budgets sit.

The street side: what the outdoor data say

American out-of-home figures are unusually detailed, so they make a good test case. The OAAA's third-quarter 2025 report, summarised by Billboard Insider, put revenue at $2.13 billion, up 4.5% and the 18th straight quarter of growth. Digital formats grew 11.6% in the quarter and represented 35% of year-to-date revenue. By format, transit rose 11.4%, place-based media 8.3% and street furniture 7.1%.

The other forecasters agree on direction, if not on size. dentsu saw out-of-home at +2.7%, with digital sites at +4.2% and traditional ones at +2.0%. Magna combined out-of-home and cinema and expected +5%. Place-based media, the screens inside venues and shopping centres, is the format where people already stand together.

For the people who run shows, the figures from the OAAA summary on place-based media (+8.3%) and transit (+11.4%) are a reminder that public venues, stations and shopping spaces are being filled with screens. A costumed character has to share those spaces with them, and a good organiser plans for it.

Who buys public attention

The categories

The same OAAA summary lists the leading product categories of the quarter: legal services, hospitals and clinics, consumer banking, hotels and resorts, software, quick-service restaurants, colleges and universities, and local government. Many of them are service businesses that depend on people in a given place.

The newcomers

Among the 100 largest out-of-home advertisers, 65 raised spend over the previous year, 19 more than doubled it, and nearly 30% were technology or direct-to-consumer brands. Brands born online now buy physical space, which says something about how they see the limits of the screen.

A note on older media

WARC's December 2025 update, relayed by Manifest Media, grouped publishing, television, audio, outdoor and cinema as legacy media. They were expected to shrink 1.3% in 2025, then grow 2.1% in 2026 and 2.6% in 2027. That is a long way from the double-digit gains of the platforms, though it also means the decline is slowing. The same report expects the World Cup in 2026 to lift American advertising.

Magna's own caution on traditional media is worth repeating: without the absence of US elections and Olympics in 2025, traditional media owners would have been flat, and the same source expected total world growth of 6.3% in 2026 when sporting events return. Event calendars do move the numbers.

The platform side, in short

The growth that is leaving television and publishing lands mostly on platforms. Magna sized digital players at $715 billion for 2025, up 8%, with social at $242 billion and +11%, and short-form video at $80 billion and +7%. dentsu's categories read slightly differently: social +9.2%, programmatic +8.4%, search +8.3%. Both sets confirm that the audience is being sold in small units, one viewer at a time.

That is the background against which a live show or a street parade is measured, by organisers if not by the studies. Whatever the entertainment, the audience is also on a screen before and after it.

Limits and method

The OAAA data are American, and they describe revenue earned by outdoor companies, not the effect on passers-by. The street figures are one quarter, not a full year. The dentsu and Magna numbers are June forecasts that later moved. None of these studies covers live shows, stage acts or costumed characters; we found no dataset that does, and we say so. One line in the OAAA summary lists a category total equal to the quarterly total, which may be an error in the source, so we left it out.

What this changes for a show, a fete or a headline character

Crowds are the opposite of an algorithm. A person who meets a character at a fair, a festival or a school show does it at the same time as everyone around them. Where the screens sell individual attention, a stage presence builds a shared memory. That is a judgement and not a finding of the studies above.

A custom character can be made as a star of your show: your colours, your logo, text of your choice. We make no claim on ticket sales or footfall. The numbers only explain why a live, physical character stands apart from the channels that took most of the growth in 2025.

Sources

• dentsu, June 2025 forecasts
• Magna via TheWrap, June 2025
• OAAA via Billboard Insider, December 2025
• WARC via Manifest Media, December 2025

Frequently asked questions

Request a free quote