08/05/2026
Digital becomes radio’s growth engine (RAB report)
Posted on August 5, 2026 by Brad Hill
The Radio Advertising Bureau (RAB), official trade association of the U.S. broadcast radio industry, has released a metrics study documenting the growth and standing of digital advertising revenue.
The depth of work in this project results in a 71-page presentation deck, freely available HERE. The report is sponsored by business software and services company Marketron, for the 14th consecutive year.
Marketron is hip deep in the editorializing of this work, contributing a foreword which gets right to the point: “Selling digital is no longer an experiment or an add-on, but instead it’s an expectation. Broadcasters, advertisers, and sales
teams all assume digital is part of the conversation.”
A dense two-page intro offers the background and methodology, where we learn that Borrell Associates did the hard lifting of the survey work (though Borrell branding does not appear on the title slide).
The table of contents is impressive if not forbidding, and represents the 41 slides to follow.
We learn that 406 radio ad buyers and 242 radio managers were queried in the survey. Some of that field work happened over a year ago; none of it more recently than January of this year.
The Executive Summary is from Borrell Associates, and sets the stage for the perspective of radio pivoting. “Radio’s revenue story has fundamentally changed,” is the leading sentence. It traces a story of digital growth and radio sluggishness, followed by a stabilizing period this year.
A few selected statements from this intro offer a a topical sketch of the full report:
“Since 2022, digital has grown at an 8.3% compound annual rate, while core radio has declined at –2.2%, resulting in flat total industry revenue. In practical terms, digital has become radio’s financial shock absorber and only growth engine.”
“Local businesses aren’t just advertising consumers. They’re marketing apprentices.”
“Advertisers and agencies still view radio as effective—often ranking it among the highest for ROI—but also consider it difficult to measure. This gap presents both a risk and an opportunity.”
“Only about one in four radio advertisers buys a station’s digital offerings, and digital-only customers represent just 10% of total client bases. Conversion remains the industry’s biggest unrealized opportunity.”
“Digital is no longer an add-on to radio. It is the primary determinant of revenue stability, competitive relevance and future growth.”
The report is free to download; get it HERE.
