Music, radio and podcast advertising grew by just 1.3% in 2025
Global advertising body the IAB and PwC have released their ‘2025 Internet Advertising Revenue Report‘, which tracks a 13.9% increase in those revenue last year to $294.6bn – a record total.
Within that, social advertising revenues grew by 32.6% to $117.7bn, and are now 40% of alll digital advertising. Digital video was up 25.4% to $78bn, meanwhile.
The news isn’t quite as good in the sector that most-directly affects the music industry: the IAB’s ‘music, radio and podcast’ catagory.
That grew just 1.3% year-on-year, despite the fact that when the report stripped podcast advertising out separately, that was up 17.6%.
The fact that music-streaming ads struggled in 2025 isn’t a surprise if you’ve been following the financial results of Spotify. Its annual report for that year revealed a 1% drop in its ad-supported revenues.
