$2.4 Million Per Month, One Firm
In the Dallas-Fort Worth designated market area, 148 law firms advertise each month. One of them controls more than a third of the total spend.
Thomas J. Henry spends $2.4 million monthly on advertising in Dallas. That’s 34.7% of the market’s entire $6.9 million ad economy. No other major US market has a single firm with that level of dominance. In Jackson, Mississippi, Morgan and Morgan holds 38% of a much smaller market. In Dallas, a top-five DMA, no one comes close to what Thomas J. Henry has built.
This article examines how that dominance works, what it means for the 147 other firms advertising in Dallas, and where the data points to competitive openings. The broader Dallas legal advertising guide maps those openings by channel.
The Dallas Ad Economy
Dallas-Fort Worth is the nation’s fifth-largest DMA. Its $6.9 million monthly legal ad market grew 25.5% compared to the prior period. That growth rate places Dallas among the fastest-expanding legal ad markets in the country.
The channel mix looks like this.
| Channel | Monthly Spend | Share | Ad Instances |
|---|---|---|---|
| Broadcast Television | $3.8M | 55.3% | 11,983 |
| Radio | $2.4M | 34.4% | 31,050 |
| Streaming/CTV | $665K | 9.7% | 2,179 |
| Cable | $46K | 0.7% | 208 |
Two numbers stand out. Radio captures 34.4% of total spend, one of the highest radio allocations among major markets. And streaming sits at just 9.7%, making Dallas one of the least CTV-adopted large markets in the country. The top PI advertisers by market show how this pattern concentrates power.
Dallas is a broadcast and radio market. Traditional media dominates, and the firms that built their brands here built them on television and radio.
Thomas J. Henry’s Budget Breakdown
Here is where Thomas J. Henry’s $2.4 million monthly budget goes.
| Channel | Monthly Spend | Share of Budget |
|---|---|---|
| Broadcast Television | $1.86M | 78.1% |
| Radio | $321K | 13.4% |
| Streaming/CTV | $202K | 8.5% |
| Cable | $0 | 0% |
His strategy is clear. Nearly $1.9 million per month goes to broadcast television alone. That number exceeds the total advertising budget of every other firm in the Dallas market. The second-largest advertiser, Jim Adler, spends $866,000 total across all channels. Thomas J. Henry spends more than double that on television alone.
Radio adds another $321,000 monthly. Between broadcast and radio, 91.5% of his budget goes to traditional media. His CTV allocation of $202,000 represents a small but growing concession to streaming. Even that modest streaming spend is more than what most Dallas firms allocate to CTV.
Nationally, AdImpact recorded 31,000 Thomas J. Henry broadcast airings between Q1 2023 and Q4 2025. That places him fourth nationally behind Farah and Farah (55,000), Morris Bart (47,000), and Law Brothers (40,000). His airing volume is significant, but his market dominance in Dallas specifically comes from concentration. Rather than spreading spend across many DMAs, Thomas J. Henry pours outsized budgets into his core Texas markets.
The Competitive Landscape
Here is how the top 10 Dallas advertisers compare.
| Rank | Firm | Monthly Spend | Market Share | Streaming % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Thomas J. Henry | $2.39M | 34.7% | 8.5% |
| 2 | Jim Adler & Associates | $866K | 12.6% | 2.4% |
| 3 | Ben Abbott & Associates | $627K | 9.1% | 0.9% |
| 4 | Thompson Law | $463K | 6.7% | 38.3% |
| 5 | Mullen & Mullen | $344K | 5.0% | 0% |
| 6 | Frenkel & Frenkel | $255K | 3.7% | 12.2% |
| 7 | United Firm | $195K | 2.8% | 0% |
| 8 | Witherite Law Group | $162K | 2.4% | 0% |
| 9 | Erika N. Salter | $124K | 1.8% | 0% |
| 10 | Godsey Law Firm | $104K | 1.5% | 0% |
The top five firms control 68.1% of the market. That concentration is high but not unusual for Texas markets, where established personal injury brands carry significant broadcast presence in cities like Dallas and Houston.
What is unusual is the CTV column. Among the top 10, six firms allocate 0% to streaming. Jim Adler runs 2.4% CTV. Ben Abbott runs 0.9%. Only Thompson Law at 38.3% and Frenkel and Frenkel at 12.2% show meaningful CTV adoption.
The Radio Battle
Dallas has one of the highest radio allocations in the country at 34.4% of total market spend. That’s not a quirk of a few firms. It reflects the structure of the Dallas-Fort Worth metro.
The DFW commuter population is large. Average commute times are long. Spanish-language radio stations reach a significant and growing demographic. Radio in Texas is not a declining channel. It is a primary battleground for legal advertisers.
Mullen and Mullen runs 100% radio at $344,000 monthly. Witherite Law Group runs 100% radio at $162,000. Erika N. Salter and Godsey Law Firm are also pure radio operations. Thomas J. Henry allocates $321,000 to radio monthly, making him one of the largest legal radio advertisers in the market despite radio being secondary to his television strategy.
The radio concentration creates a specific competitive dynamic. Broadcast television is dominated by Thomas J. Henry. Radio is crowded with five or more firms competing for the same drive-time slots. The one channel with relatively little competition from major advertisers is CTV.
Thompson Law: The Counter-Strategy
Thompson Law spends $463,000 monthly in Dallas with 38.3% going to streaming. That is the highest CTV allocation among the top 10 advertisers by a significant margin.
Their channel split shows an intentional counter-strategy to the broadcast-heavy competition.
| Channel | Spend | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Streaming/CTV | $177K | 38.3% |
| Broadcast TV | $151K | 32.6% |
| Radio | $135K | 29.1% |
Thompson Law cannot outspend Thomas J. Henry on broadcast. Nobody in Dallas can. Instead, they maintain a balanced allocation that includes meaningful presence on the channel their largest competitor barely uses.
This mirrors Thompson Law’s approach in Atlanta, where they run 68.7% streaming. In Dallas, their CTV percentage is lower, but the strategic intent is the same. Build presence on the channel where the incumbents are weakest.
The CTV Opportunity Score
Dallas scores 85 out of 100 on our CTV opportunity index, one of the highest scores among major markets. That score reflects three factors.
Low adoption. Only 9.7% of Dallas legal ad spend goes to streaming. That’s less than one-fifth of Atlanta’s 48%.
High market spend. At $6.9 million monthly, Dallas is large enough that even a small share of CTV impressions reaches a meaningful audience.
Incumbent vulnerability. The dominant advertisers, Thomas J. Henry, Jim Adler, and Ben Abbott, run almost entirely on broadcast and radio. Their competitive moats are built on traditional media. A firm investing $50,000 to $100,000 monthly on CTV in Dallas would face almost no competition from the top three spenders for streaming inventory.
What It Takes to Compete in Thomas J. Henry’s Market
The data doesn’t suggest that $2.4 million monthly on broadcast is the only way to compete in Dallas. It suggests the opposite.
Thomas J. Henry’s dominance is channel-specific. He owns broadcast television in Dallas. Attempting to match or even approach his broadcast budget isn’t a viable strategy for any competitor. The math doesn’t work at $1.9 million monthly on TV alone.
The viable path is channel diversification. Thompson Law demonstrates this at $463,000 monthly with 38.3% streaming. Their total budget is less than one-fifth of Thomas J. Henry’s, but on CTV specifically, they spend almost as much as Henry does on streaming. Thompson Law is competitive on the one channel where Henry’s $2.4 million budget gives him the least advantage.
For firms spending $50,000 to $200,000 monthly in Dallas, broadcast is a losing proposition against incumbents with 10 to 50 times the budget. CTV allows household-level targeting, measurable attribution, and frequency control without competing for the same inventory that Thomas J. Henry has locked up.
The 148 firms advertising in Dallas each month have a choice. Compete against a firm that has spent 15 years building broadcast dominance, or build presence on the channel that dominance does not cover.