How Legal Services Marketers Are Spending Their Local Ad Dollars
AdImpact report sees growth in local CTV budgets
The verdict is in. Law firms are big advertisers, expected to spend more than $3 billion this year, according to a new report by AdImpact.
“Despite rising media costs and a fragmented viewing landscape, law firms continue to invest aggressively in linear and streaming television to protect market share and drive case volume,” the report said.
AdImpact analyzed three years of legal advertising activity, from Q1 2023 to Q4 2025.
Local television grabs about half of law firm ad spending, with more than $800 million of that going to linear TV. Spending on connected TV is rising fast however, with a 241% jump from Q1 2023 to Q4 2025.
“The modern legal media mix isn’t a bet on new channels — it’s insurance against fragmentation."
Spending on local TV stations has remained steady, according to AdImpact.
“Instead of abandoning broadcast, legal advertisers are layering CTV on top of existing linear strategies to increase reach, precision, and speed to market.”
In local markets, commercials for legal services represent 4-5% of all local impressions. Law firms’ share of market peaked in Q1 2024 at 5.13%.
On local broadcast, legal services represent 6.12% of ad impressions. In local CTV, legal services have a 2.72% share of ad impressions.
CTV is gaining in local marketing efforts by law firms because it enables DMA-level entry without national broadcast costs, ZIP-code level targeting, platform-specific strategies and faster optimization, according to the report.
Despite those attributes, local broadcast still gets the lion’s share of ad dollars because it still delivers unmatched reach, especially among viewers age 65 and older and homes that still subscribe to traditional pay TV.
“Firms that shift exclusively to CTV risk leaving meaningful demand untapped,” the report says. “Local broadcast builds dominance. CTV delivers precision and market expansion. Winners optimize both.”
A commercial for the firm of Farah & Farah ran more than 55,000 times, according to AdImpact. Other firms whose commercials appeared thousands of times on the airwaves include Morris Bart, Attorneys at Law, Law Brothers, Thomas J Henry, Jacoby & Meyers and Morgan & Morgan.
What kinds of ads are they airing? AdImpact’s analysis found law firm commercials had a heavy emphasis on personal injury and mass torts. They emphasized service accessibility and clear, urgency-driven calls to action. The tone of the campaigns varied from aggressive saturation to trust-led branding.
The report concludes by saying that legal marketers should see all advertising activity across linear TV and CTV in one place. They should analyze their competition at the local market level, and connect spending, impressions and creative into a unified view.
AdImpact used automated content recognition (ACR) technology to track 500 billion broadcast impressions and 300 billion CTV impressions per quarter.
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Zefr said it received Media Rating Council accreditation for content-level brand safety and suitability reporting on YouTube.
Previously, Zefr had received accreditation for independent third-party viewability reporting on YouTube.
“Today is a watershed moment for Brand Safety. Historically, many of the industry’s challenges stemmed from relying on property-level controls rather than true content-level measurement. Now, advertisers can have greater confidence that content-level safety measurement is robust and accurate,” said Rich Raddon, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Zefr. “Following YouTube’s accreditation of Google Content Level YouTube Brand Safety and Suitability, Zefr is proud to be the first third-party company in this ecosystem to offer this accreditation, alongside MRC-accredited free viewability metrics.”
The accreditation follows an audit by the MRC that evaluated Zefr’s methodologies, controls, data governance and reporting processes.
“The MRC congratulates Zefr on earning accreditation for third-party Content-Level Brand Safety and Suitability content-labeling and reporting of Google YouTube for the submitted inventory and environments,” said George Ivie, MRC CEO and Executive Director.
“This important achievement represents the first such accreditation for a third-party platform integration and demonstrates Zefr’s commitment to rigorous industry standards as well as provides the marketplace with greater transparency and accountability regarding safety and suitability across YouTube," Ivie said.