Research I shared during the recent INMA CEO Roundtable in Napa Valley shows the biggest category of spend by far over the next few years — and I’ve given it away here with the title  — is digital video, which will represent about 44% of total spend by 2028, including four of the top seven channels (CTV, social video, video-as-display, and other online video.)

In a recent blog post, I went in-depth on advertising projections overall and for the news industry. But today, let’s focus on video.

The future is digital video 

Note that while linear TV will continue to decline, it will still represent 11.2% of spend in 2028, which is not insignificant. Linear TV also remains the channel individual consumers spend the most time with, on average, according to the IAB (a good reminder the media and advertising economy is often irrational).

But above all, the future is very much about digital video. Digital formats now represent a majority (58%) of TV/video advertising — and 68% of buyers consider CTV essential for media plans. Publishers will have to evolve to take advantage (and I’ll return to this in a moment).

No surprise here. All forms of “traditional” or “physical” media are in the bottom five, with physical out-of-home, traditional radio, linear TV, and all forms of print projected to either erode or remain basically flat. 

But the big one is static digital display, or the traditional IAB banner (the classic set of 728x90s, 300x250s and 160x600s), which is the bottom channel in terms of outlook.

If it’s not already obvious, while audio/podcasts, events, branded content, and affiliate commerce* are projected to grow at moderate to strong rates depending on the channel, that can’t be said about the classic publisher mix. Reliance on print and open Web static banners is not going to work as both are in managed decline. Publishers not diversified in revenue streams will be in a very difficult position — and overleveraged scale models are, of course, the most vulnerable (a key reason why our focus in the Advertising Initiative is on the “post-traffic era”).

*Note that it’s a bit difficult to get reliable global spend and projection data on events, branded content, and affiliate commerce in the same way we get outlook data for other channels, so I’ve only included the average growth rates in the chart above. The spend percentages were a bit inconsistent, but the individual growth outlooks on the categories are consistent enough to give me confidence in communicating those rates.

​​The IAB banner is dying, but display isn’t

First, it’s important to note that you may see projections for “display” that seem to differ with the outlook above. That’s because “display” means a lot of different things right now and is increasingly diversifying across a number of different channels like retail media and others, so be cautious and have a look at definitions when reviewing outlook data for display.

Case in point: The overall category of “display” is still projected to be 13%-15% of global media spend in 2025 (US$125 to US$150B), with slow-to-modest growth through 2028. But spend on the traditional static IAB banner ad is declining and declining fast — with spend on those open Web static banners now projected to decline 8%-12% from 2025-2028.

Display is transforming into short-form video

What’s really happening is the majority of the spend on those traditional banners is shifting toward short-form vertical video — and in fact 70% of display spend is projected to shift to digital video formats by 2028, driving US$146 billion in short-form video ad spend.

Video content is increasingly the dominant form of Internet traffic and, as always, advertising revenue is aligning with the dominant behaviours of audiences.

The general consensus is that six- to 10-second vertical video will become the standard display format — in-app and Web.

To win, publishers will have to create hybrid formats that break traditional “instream/outstream” definitions. And it is the consistent conclusion of leading publishers like News Corp Australia, The New York Times, and others that the best chance for publishers to win these budgets is to find ways to enable advertisers to run their short-form social video assets in publisher-owned channels.

From a measurement perspective, success will increasingly be focused on “outcomes” like brand lift, assisted attribution, or incremental sales rather than traditional digital video metrics like VCR. And there are early signs that attention metrics may play a significant role in digital video measurement in the near future. 

It’s also becoming clearer and clearer that advertisers will increasingly use GenAI for the vast majority of video ad creation. They’ll also want to make trafficking their assets as easy as possible, so it’s likely they’ll want to transact programmatically the majority of the time and employ VAST tags. And they’ll favour publishers who anticipate and build for all of that.

Short-form vertical video represents the biggest overall opportunity to publishers, but there are other ways to tap into digital video spends. In-article video, video podcasts, social video, YouTube, and CTV are viable options for publishers who already have the infrastructure, have broadcast legacies, or can tap into data partnerships. 

But it’s important to note that everyone who has looked at this in detail has concluded the same thing, which is that it’s more difficult to win the more traditional instream/outstream budgets or to sell the publisher environment as an equal to broadcast.

Video success requires collaborative strategies

Success in video requires more than just the commitment of the advertising department. 

What the data increasingly shows is a wholesale shift toward digital video as the primary communication and engagement method of the modern Internet, and news publishers are going to have to increase video coverage to serve audiences in ways they’ll increasingly expect. 

Leadership, newsroom, marketing, advertising, and product are all going to have to drive this forward together. And that’s probably going to require some bigger discussions. Recent reporting from Semafor indicates capacity for producing video journalism was a factor in the recent reorganisation of The New York Times culture desk.  

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