GroupM, the world’s largest ad buyer, is forecasting total TV advertising in the U.S. will drop by 7% in 2020 and another 12% in 2021. National TV will drop 11% in 2020 and gain 6% next year. Local TV will bear the brunt in 2020, dropping 34%, due to slowing retail and automotive advertising. But when one-time political ads are added in for 2020, GroupM sees a 1% total increase in local TV advertising.

However, it is forecasting a “modest” 3% decline in advertising revenue for TV “digital extensions” (which it defines as both “digital ad revenue realized by traditional media owners for their traditional properties and the pure-play digital media owners with directly competitive products”). GroupM includes Hulu, Roku and others in the digital extensions category. And for 2021, GroupM sees TV digital extensions advertising increasing by 15%. GroupM believes that TV digital extensions spending will add up to around 14% of national TV ad spending in 2020.

The forecasts are included in GroupM’s “This Year Next Year” mid 2020 advertising report.

GroupM’s optimism for digital extensions is good news ahead of next week’s IAB NewFronts, where over 2 dozen OTT content providers and technology platforms will present to ad buyers, who have been dealing with tons of pandemic-related uncertainty.

More broadly, GroupM is forecasting a 13% decline across all advertising formats in the U.S. in 2020, excluding political advertising. If political ads are added back in, the 2020 decline is reduced to 8%. For 2021, total advertising will drop by 4%. GroupM also forecasts digital advertising to drop by 3% in 2020 without political advertising, and to be flat with it. But in 2021, GroupM sees growth of 12%.

The full GroupM report can be downloaded here.