Personal injury advertising has evolved dramatically over the past two decades. The biggest current shift: streaming and CTV advertising for law firms is reshaping the media mix. Understanding these trends helps you anticipate where the market is heading.
The Major Shifts
Trend 1: Television Spending Has Tripled
Over nearly 20 years, TV ad spend by lawyers and others soliciting legal claims tripled to approximately $1.2 billion annually. Ad counts are up roughly 5x over the same period.
Despite predictions that “TV is dying,” PI firms continue investing heavily in broadcast and cable. The channel works for building awareness at scale.
Trend 2: Digital Costs Are Exploding
The digital story is counterintuitive:
| Metric | 2020 to 2024 |
|---|---|
| Digital ad volume | Down 50%+ |
| Digital ad spend | Up 84% |
Fewer digital placements for dramatically higher spend indicates severe cost inflation. For PI firms, this manifests as:
- Rising Google Ads CPCs ($50-$150+ for competitive terms)
- Higher CPMs on programmatic display and video
- Increasing costs for CTV/streaming inventory
- LSA lead prices trending upward
Digital works, but the economic efficiency is eroding.
Trend 3: Mass Tort Has Become a Major Category
Mass tort advertising is no longer a niche subcategory:
- General PI (auto, slip/fall) accounts for approximately $1 billion annually
- Specific mass tort topics add another $152.3 million
- Often funded by third-party litigation financiers and national aggregators
- Creates volume spikes around specific drug/device campaigns
Mass tort’s growth has professionalized legal advertising, bringing sophisticated media buying and attribution to the category, techniques that now influence general PI marketing.
Trend 4: Out-of-Home Is Surging
Billboards and transit advertising have increased more than 260% since 2017:
- Particularly concentrated in high-traffic metros
- Often used for local market saturation
- Complements TV and digital for brand building
- Harder for competitors to directly track and counter
Trend 5: Streaming/CTV Is Reshaping the Mix
The shift from traditional broadcast to streaming is accelerating:
- 47% of TV viewing now happens through streaming
- CTV offers household-level targeting (not just demo + daypart)
- Non-skippable inventory with 95%+ completion rates
- Better attribution through device graphs
Firms that buy broadcast-only are missing nearly half the TV audience. Smart advertisers are combining traditional TV with programmatic CTV to capture both reach and precision.
What These Trends Mean
Rising Costs Everywhere
Every major channel is getting more expensive:
- TV CPMs rising as audiences fragment
- Digital CPCs/CPMs up 84%+ in just four years
- CTV inventory becoming more competitive
The same budget buys less than it did in 2020. This forces harder decisions about allocation and efficiency.
Targeting Is Becoming More Important
In a world of rising costs, waste matters more:
- Broad demographic targeting (adults 25-54) is increasingly expensive
- Household-level targeting reduces waste
- Probabilistic matching to injury-prone audiences improves efficiency
- The shift is from “reach everyone” to “reach the right ones”
Attribution Demands Are Increasing
“We ran TV and cases went up” isn’t sufficient anymore:
- Firms expect to connect impressions to calls to signed cases
- Multi-touch attribution is replacing last-click models
- Brand lift studies measure awareness impact
- Cost per signed case is the key metric, not cost per impression
Differentiation Is Harder
When everyone is buying the same TV spots, running the same Google Ads, and bidding on the same keywords:
- Creative differentiation becomes essential
- Channel innovation (like early CTV adoption) provides temporary advantage
- Brand building, creating recognition before the moment of need, becomes the sustainable competitive moat
Where the Market Is Heading
Based on current trajectories:
TV will fragment further. Streaming will continue gaining share, forcing advertisers to balance broadcast and CTV.
Digital costs will keep rising. Google has no incentive to lower prices, and competition is intensifying.
Mass tort will remain a major driver. Litigation financing ensures continued ad spend around emerging claims.
Household-level targeting will become standard. The blunt instruments of demo targeting will give way to precision.
Attribution expectations will increase. “Trust me, it works” won’t satisfy CFOs or partners asking about marketing ROI.
The firms that thrive will be those that adapt to these shifts, reaching the right households, on the right screens, with messaging that differentiates, and measurement that proves return.