Nielsen has just issued figures about just how bad advertising was during 2009, and how rapidly it is recovering in 2010, showing a global fall last year of 1.6% but with the US down a huge 9.4% and Europe off by 4.9%. Nielsen gets all these figures from its Global AdView Pulse service, which reports advertising across 27 markets in Asia, North America, Europe and Africa.
Asia Pacific reversed the effects of the downturn the fastest and by quarter two 2009 it was up and is now showing growth of 6.6% compared to 2008. In Europe and the US advertising expenditure is still lagging behind 2008 levels.
‘Despite ad spend declining overall in 2009, the final part of the year showed growth ‘ a good sign of things to come this year,’ said Ben van der Werf, Managing Director of Nielsen Global AdView. ‘But, while the first half of 2009 compares to a fairly strong, pre-crisis beginning of 2008, the second half of the year compares to a weaker end of 2008, which may ‘inflate’ the growth.
The last six months of 2009 started to provide some relief to the advertising industry, with television benefiting the most and radio landing about the same amount of ad revenue as 2008.
Print was the worst hit of the four major media types, with Magazines taking the bigger hit. Internet was the only media type to see ad revenue growth, and was often the only one to register a positive trend when the more traditional media suffered declines.
Despite the crisis, some sectors increased ad budgets. With FMCG up 10.6%, Healthcare up 6.1% and Distribution Channels up 4.2% when all other sectors were down. The biggest falls were in Automotive off 15.1%, Clothing & Accessories down 11.6% and Financial losing 11.4%.
All of this seems to suggest that advertising will recover strongly in 2010, with most regions getting back to 2008 levels, although the magazine industry may never quite recover and the US still has some way to go.