Television remains the dominant channel for legal advertising despite digital’s growth. Our monthly tracking of where $150 million in legal advertising goes shows just how concentrated this spending is. The scale has made attorney ads a distinct category that insurers and policy analysts track as a driver of “social inflation” in claims costs.
The TV Numbers
The volume is remarkable:
- 16.4 million TV ads for legal services in 2023
- 44% increase in TV ad volume versus 2017
- Approximately 45,000 ads per day
- Roughly 1,876 ads per hour
- One legal ad every two seconds across U.S. television
Over nearly 20 years, estimated TV spend by lawyers and others soliciting legal claims has tripled to approximately $1.2 billion. Ad counts have increased roughly 5x over the same period.
Why TV Persists
Despite predictions of “TV is dead,” legal advertisers continue pouring money into broadcast and cable:
Reach: TV still reaches the largest audiences, particularly older demographics who watch live programming.
Credibility: Television advertising carries perceived legitimacy. “As seen on TV” remains meaningful.
Brand building: TV’s audio-visual format creates stronger brand impressions than text-based digital ads.
Proven ROI: For decades, PI firms have tracked that TV advertising correlates with case volume. The channel works.
The Channel Mix Shift
While TV maintains the largest share, the landscape is evolving:
| Channel | Trend (2017-2024) |
|---|---|
| TV volume | +44% |
| TV spend | Tripled (~20 years) |
| Digital volume | -50%+ |
| Digital spend | +84% |
| Out-of-home | +260% |
TV is growing but fragmenting. Broadcast audiences are declining as streaming grows. The same $1.2 billion buys different inventory than it did a decade ago.
Digital costs are exploding. Fewer placements for much higher spend indicates serious cost inflation, particularly in legal search.
OOH is surging. Billboards and transit ads have more than tripled, suggesting firms are diversifying beyond TV.
Broadcast vs. Streaming
The $1.2 billion in “TV” spending spans different delivery methods:
Traditional Broadcast/Cable
- Broad reach across DMAs
- Limited targeting beyond daypart and network
- 30-second spots, often skippable with DVR
- CPMs vary significantly by market and program
Connected TV (CTV/Streaming)
- Household-level targeting by demographics and behaviors
- Non-skippable inventory with 95%+ completion rates
- Addressable by geography down to zip code
- Better attribution through device graphs
47% of TV viewing now happens through streaming. Advertisers who buy only traditional broadcast are missing nearly half the audience, and arguably the more targetable half.
Seasonality in Legal TV
Legal TV advertising follows patterns:
Higher spend periods:
- Tax season (Q1), especially for mass tort
- Summer months, higher driving, more accidents
- Storm seasons, property damage and injury claims
- Mass tort filing windows, coordinated campaign launches
Lower spend periods:
- Late Q4/holiday season
- Periods between major mass tort pushes
Specific monthly and weekly data requires subscriptions to AdImpact or Nielsen, but the general patterns are observable.
Legal’s Share of TV
Legal advertising has grown large enough to be tracked as a distinct category impacting the insurance industry. Insurers now analyze attorney advertising as a component of “social inflation”. The idea that aggressive solicitation increases claims frequency and severity.
Travelers, ATRA, and Triple-I all publish research specifically on legal advertising’s TV presence, treating it alongside pharma, auto, and insurance as a major advertiser category.
The Efficiency Question
Here’s the honest assessment:
TV works for legal. Decades of data confirm the correlation between TV spend and case volume.
But TV at scale has limitations:
Waste is inherent. Broad reach means paying for impressions to people who will never need your services.
Targeting is limited. Demographics and dayparts are blunt instruments compared to digital precision.
Attribution is challenging. Tracking TV’s impact on calls and cases requires sophisticated measurement, vanity URLs, call tracking, brand lift studies, and modeled attribution.
Competition is intense. When every firm is buying the same local news and daytime slots, differentiation disappears.
The firms seeing the best TV ROI increasingly combine traditional broadcast with CTV/streaming, using programmatic targeting to reach specific households while maintaining the broad reach of traditional TV.
That combination. The big screen at the household level, changes the efficiency equation.