Programmatic audio is moving from the test budget to the main budget, and radio sellers need to pay attention to where those dollars are coming from, because marketers are funding that growth by pulling back from traditional TV and radio buys, per a new report.
Proximic by Comscore’s 2026 State of Programmatic surveyed more than 200 advertising decision-makers in November, and the findings show 58% of marketers plan to increase programmatic investment this year. While that’s down from 72% in 2025, Proximic says buyers are moving away from “scale first, optimize later” and becoming more disciplined about where they spend.
That discipline is showing up in how inventory gets bought. Open exchange buying is losing ground to curated and private marketplaces, where advertisers say they can secure higher-quality inventory and reduce exposure to low-value placements. Targeting strategy is tightening alongside supply. Contextual targeting is gaining traction, with nearly three-quarters of respondents planning to increase or maintain its use year over year.
In privacy-sensitive verticals like healthcare and financial services, contextual targeting is now the primary approach, outpacing ID-based and ID-free strategies.
So where are the budgets for these new endeavors coming from? Among advertisers increasing programmatic audio spending, linear TV is the top source of redirected budget. But the bigger red flag for broadcasters is what shows up in the “other” category: “Radio” was the most common write-in response under “other” budget sources feeding programmatic audio growth.
While that’s not news many traditional radio broadcasters want to hear, a window is opening as a door closes.
CTV remains a major piece of that cross-platform shift, and it matters for radio sellers because it’s increasingly part of the digital video toolkit local sellers are bringing to market. A majority of respondents expect more than 60% of their CTV buys to be transacted programmatically in 2026, with some buyers planning to run all CTV buying through programmatic channels. Notably, audio and podcasts are among the sources being tapped to fund CTV growth, reinforcing that buyers are managing both channels inside the same programmatic framework.
What buyers want next is pretty clear: fewer promises, more proof.
Proximic says AI-powered optimization is now a baseline expectation in programmatic, with more than four in five marketers calling it important when evaluating partners for 2026. Advertisers expect AI to do the work that drives outcomes inside the platform, including audience targeting and modeling, campaign pacing and bid automation, measurement and attribution, and fraud detection and brand safety.
That same shift is changing how campaigns get planned. Instead of buying first and trying to optimize later, marketers want performance accounted for before launch. Predicted reach and predicted conversion outcomes rank as the most important pre-launch indicators, reinforcing that the new standard is planning around expected business impact, not post-campaign explanations.
And when it comes time to judge results, the report shows buyers are prioritizing outcome metrics over engagement signals. Conversion rate is the top measure, followed by ROAS and reach and frequency. Cross-channel performance reporting inside programmatic platforms is also becoming a must, especially as audio and streaming video live side by side in the same plan and buyers want a unified view of what worked across both.
