For years now the death of cable TV has been predicted because of the growing number of Americans ditching cable TV for streaming services. Yet, what may kill cable TV and, more importantly, the cable networks they offer, are advertisers moving away from traditional TV.
Many cable TV networks thought streaming would keep advertisers and Americans happy, but so far streaming services like MAX, Peacock, Paramount+, and Disney+ have failed to replace revenue lost by the decline in cable TV viewership.
More importantly, advertisers are increasingly turning away from traditional advertising. According to the Wall Street Journal, when Oreo launched its new space-themed cookie they spent zero dollars on television advertising using instead social media and websites like Amazon and Walmart to promote it.
In 2016, advertisers spent $60 billion on traditional TV advertising according to Madison. Now that number is projected to drop below $30 billion for traditional televisions. This is a huge blow for cable TV as in 2025 it’s projected that even digital TV sales will drop close to $50 billion.
Increasingly, the decline in viewership has hurt cable TV networks but advertisers pulling away has dropped the revenue even farther.
The continuing drop in advertising revenue has impacted the future of cable TV moreso than cord cutting. If this trend continues, lack of money may force many small cable TV networks to shut down far faster than what cord cutting alone would have done. The question now is how fast will advertisers ditch cable TV.
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