Radio’s “digital-first” leader finished 2025 meeting its own guidance, but Townsquare Media CEO Bill Wilson spent most of the Q4 earnings call on Monday morning making the case that the headline numbers of a $9.8 million net loss for the year are telling the wrong story.
“By now, it should be very clear that Townsquare has transformed from a legacy broadcast company into a digital-first local media company,” Wilson said in a Monday morning earnings call, “and that our digital platform and digital execution sets us apart from others in local media.”
In 2025, approximately 55% of total net revenue came from digital, up from 52% in 2024. Digital businesses generated 56% of total segment profit, up from 50%. Wilson called that “two times our competitors, as on average they only have 30% of their revenue coming from digital sources.”
The clearest drag on the digital story was a sharp decline in remnant, a.k.a. indirect, digital advertising revenue, driven by a roughly 45% drop in unique visitors to Townsquare’s owned-and-operated websites as Google search referrals dried up in favor of AI sources like chatbots and large language models. “This is an industry-wide issue impacting publishers of all sizes,” Wilson said. Unique visitors fell from approximately 70 million per month in 2024 to about 40 million per month in 2025.
Remnant revenue, which CFO Stuart Rosenstein noted is “almost 100% profit margin revenue,” fell approximately 40% year-over-year, from about $20 million to $12 million. That single line item suppressed what was otherwise a strong direct digital performance. “Excluding the revenue from remnant inventory sold programmatically, 2025 digital advertising revenue overall would have increased plus 8% year over year,” Wilson said.
The good news, he added, is that January showed month-over-month audience growth; the first uptick since mid-2025. Wilson said Q1 remnant revenue is still expected to be down roughly 40% year-over-year, but for the full year 2026, the decline narrows to approximately $3 million. “As early proof point that even with the impact of AI and search engine traffic, we are in a differentiated position,” he said.
On the other hand, Townsquare’s programmatic business, representing 65% of its digital advertising segment, grew 9% in 2025 and is running up approximately 20% year-over-year in Q1 2026. Direct sales of the company’s local digital properties grew 9% in 2025 and are pacing up over 10% in Q1. Total digital advertising revenue is expected to be up in the high single digits for the full year 2026, a significant acceleration from 2025’s 1.6% growth.
Wilson reserved particular enthusiasm for the company’s media partnerships division, where Townsquare white-labels its programmatic digital advertising platform for other local media companies. The division generated $6 million in revenue in 2025, up from $1 million in 2024. Townsquare now has 11 signed partners, up from six. “I expect that in four years, this division can grow to be $50 million in revenue for Townsquare at an approximate 20% profit margin,” Wilson said.
Townsquare Interactive, the company’s subscription digital marketing solutions business, posted its highest profit margin ever of 33.6% and grew segment profit 17.4% year-over-year. But revenue fell 0.7% for the year and is expected to decline approximately 8% in Q1 2026, a hangover from a deliberate restructuring of the sales team that left headcount down roughly 40%. “It is absolutely our plan to rebuild our sales teams to prior levels,” Wilson said, projecting a return to quarter-over-quarter revenue growth as early as Q3 2026.
Wilson was unambiguous about radio’s role in the company’s future: “Radio is not a growth driver for Townsquare.” Broadcast advertising revenue fell 12.6% for the full year and 17.8% in Q4.
But he pointed to disciplined expense management and said the company continues to gain local and national broadcast market share, according to Miller Kaplan. Q1 broadcast is pacing to a “very slight improvement” versus the negative 8% ex-political trend that defined all four quarters of 2025.
On the possibility of radio acquisitions under a more permissive FCC, Wilson said the company is “war gaming” potential scenarios under Commissioner Carr. “I think a lot of interesting things can happen only for Townsquare over the next 18 months,” he said, but was careful to frame acquisitions as opportunistic, not necessary. “We don’t have to do acquisitions to grow.”
