Guess What Industry Dominates 2023's Top TV Advertisers
In 2023, advertising spend is projected to reach $61.3 billion on U.S. broadcast and cable TV.
Despite declining viewership, traditional TV has been found to be an optimal platform for storytelling ads. Additionally, advertisers can target viewer segments on traditional TV—similar to digital marketing channels.
Visual Capitalist's Dorothy Neufeld shows the top advertisers on traditional TV outlets in the chart below, based on data from Nielsen.
Top 10 National TV Advertising Spenders
Here are the top advertisers on national U.S. broadcast and cable TV for the month of June 2023:
Procter & Gamble was the top TV advertising spender in the U.S., at $109.3 million. Home to Gillette, Crest, and Tide, the company spent a stunning $5.1 billion in overall advertising in 2022.
Pharmaceutical companies Abbvie and GSK were the next biggest spenders, at $81.4 million and $52.8 million, respectively. Overall, pharmaceuticals accounted for the largest share of advertising across the top 10.
Big tech companies Alphabet and Amazon also made the list, each spending over $30 million in June alone.
Top 10 Local TV Advertising Spenders
By contrast, the automotive sector made up seven of the top 10 local broadcast and cable TV advertisers, led by General Motors and Toyota:
Meanwhile, communication giants Comcast and Charter were big spenders, and the nation’s largest personal injury law firm, Morgan & Morgan, ranked in seventh overall.
U.S. Television Trends
Today, live TV viewership in the U.S. is primarily made up of those aged 65 and over, which spend nearly five hours per day watching TV. In contrast, those aged 25-34 spend only about one hour and 12 minutes per day watching live TV.
Furthermore, in 2022, fewer than half of U.S. viewers paid for traditional TV services for the first time. By year-end 2027, this proportion is projected to fall to just over a third of households.
Yet due to its scale of available media inventory, traditional TV may continue to bring in the bulk of TV advertising spending over the near future. One reason is that advertising makes up 20% of time spent on traditional TV but just 3% on streaming platforms.
However, as viewership declines, advertisers on live TV say that they are most likely to allocate their ad spend to streaming services. By year-end 2027, ad spend on streaming platforms is projected to jump to $40.9 billion, a 63% increase from 2023.
