Digital audio ad spend in Latin America 2020-2026

In 2020, digital audio (streaming radio and podcast) advertising spending in Latin America’s largest markets stood at 25.5 million U.S. dollars. This figure is expected to nearly quadruple by 2026, reaching an estimated 95 million dollars that year.

Digital advertising in Latin America

In line with rising internet adoption rates, digital advertising spending in Latin America has rapidly increased over the past few years. In 2020, digital ad spend in the region amounted to approximately 8.88 billion U.S. dollars, marking a boost of almost 40 percent compared to the previous year. This spike was arguably fueled by the outbreak of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, which spurred online usage like never before. Taking a closer look at the different countries, Brazil expectedly stands out as the leading digital ad market in Latin America, with nearly six billion U.S. dollars in digital ad investments in 2020.

The digital audio landscape is constantly expanding

The digital audio market is also slowly gaining momentum in Latin America. For example, the average daily time spend listening to online radio in Brazil increased from 127 minutes in 2017 to 175 minutes in 2020, signaling a mounting interest in digital audio options. In addition to radio, audiences also embrace music streaming content more vividly than ever, as the rising number of Spotify users in Latin America continues to demonstrate. Meanwhile, the region is also rapidly growing its podcast listener base every year. Knowing that Spanish is poised to become the second universal language for podcasting worldwide and podcasts such as “La Corneta” boast more than one million downloads per week, audio advertisers in Latin America have their work cut out for them.