The NAB has filed comments with the FCC regarding the Commission’s upcoming Communications Marketplace Report to Congress. In those comments, the NAB says the report “should reflect the proliferation of audio content providers and the vast options now available for consumers and advertisers in today’s audio marketplace.” An example the NAB uses to describe a fragmented advertising marketplace is one company it says lost accounts totaling over $100,000.

The NAB says that money formerly spent with radio and other traditional media are now being split with – or diverted to – multiple additional platforms. And the NAB says that money is moving to digital and that includes small markets. “Midwest Communications reported the loss of local advertising accounts worth over $100,000 each in several markets (including Duluth, MN, Fargo, ND, Wausau-Stevens Point, WI and Hibbing, MN) to digital services such as Pandora and Google AdWords. Through interviews with advertisers and ad agencies, Townsquare Media found that most advertisers across a range of markets now have, on average, three times the number of companies calling on them wanting to sell advertising time/space as they did a decade ago.”

The NAB says given the emergence and rapid growth of competing advertising platforms over the past decade, it is unsurprising that the radio industry has struggled to regain the total level of advertising revenue it achieved prior to the Great Recession.