2021 Places to Grow

(By Charlie Sislen) If you are reading this, you survived 2020. So now, it’s time to focus on how to make a tremendous rebound in 2021. Besides hard work, it’s important to focus on businesses that are spending money in advertising. As I said in an earlier column, fish where the fish are!

BIA Advisory Services tracks and predicts advertising revenue on a nationwide and local market basis. They forecast ad expenditure by advertising category. In a recent interview for Forbes.com, Rick Ducey, the Managing Director of BIA, outlined how ad expenditure will change in 2021.

Ducey and BIA predict that ad revenue will grow 2.5% in 2021. This projection is subject to many unknowns. Most importantly, when and how fast the U.S. economy opens up is impacted by how quickly the population is vaccinated for COVID-19.

So what are the top categories for 2021? BIA predicts that the Leisure/Recreation sector will have the greatest rebound from a miserable 2020. In rank order, the biggest rebounds are expected to be in:

Source: BIA ADvantage U.S. Local Ad Forecast 2020-21

This is all U.S. ad expenditure, not just radio. Therefore, it’s a great source for a radio sales person to know where to look for new clients and dollars.

If a store, product, or service stopped advertising last April, they have lost at least a portion of their brand. Now that business is rebounding, they need to rebuild their brand and reignite their visibility in the marketplace. In other words, the money saved during the economic collapse needs to now be invested to rebuild what has been lost.

What categories are expected to decrease in ad spending in 2021? For obvious reasons, the biggest negative shift will be in political advertising. BIA predicts that political advertising spending will decrease nearly 87% from what we saw in 2020. This category hit new heights in 2020. Without a national election, it will nearly disappear.

Charlie Sislen is a partner at Research Director, Inc. He can be reached at 410-956-0363 or by e-mail at [email protected]. This essay is part of a series titled “Growing the Radio Pie.” To view past articles, visit The Ratings Experts at Research Director, Inc. online here.