Print advertising slumps but online excels; all is not lost for print

Wednesday 17th March 2010

New Zealand advertising has reached its lowest revenue level since 2004, but John Buckley, head of 360interactive, is not concerned.

The Advertising Standards Authority today released annual advertising revenue figures, which dropped 11.8% to $2.0 billion in total industry turnover, for the year ended December 2009.

Though negative results, Buckley, whose 360interactive unit is part of local media agency Media360, said he was gratified.

“We’d been expecting worse,” he said. Advertising revenue as a whole slumped, with every form decreasing except for online, which continued its upward trend, rising 10.9% to $214 million over the year, and 26 times higher than the $8 million spent online in 2003.

Buckley said on his Media360 blog that the figures confirm online media is starting to take market share from traditional media.

“This may be a recessionary trend, as one of the key benefits of interactive is its measurability and accountability compared to other media,” it said.

Newspaper advertising has remained the biggest earner, taking up almost a third of the total turnover at $623 million.

Television advertising fell almost 12% to $570 million. The television sector took up 27.9% of total revenue for 2009. Radio and magazine advertising both went down $32 million, to $236 million and $217 million respectively.

Outdoor advertising was down to $68 million, from $74 million in 2008. Cinema advertising revenue was slashed by a third to $6 million, 0.3% of the total spend.

Unaddressed and addressed mail both fell $3 million, to $58 million and $53 million respectively.

New Zealand isn’t the only country suffering from a downturn in advertising profit, a new American consumer survey showed.

The Project for Excellence in Journalism’s annual assessment of the state of the news industry, released last week, said newspaper advertising revenue in the United States fell 26 per cent in 2009 compared to the year before.

US local TV and radio were both down 22 per cent and network television advertising spend also fell, down 8 per cent.

Buckley said advertising in print media was expected to fall due to last year's recession, but a return to increased spending in print would eventually occur.

Businesswire.co.nz

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