Difficult times for the economy and for advertising in the current leap year 2020. After the downward estimates of Nielsen and those of the main media holding companies, yesterday also those of the Internet Media Observatory of the School of Management of the Politecnico di Milano arrived. According to the study, total deposits will amount to just over 7 billion euros at the end of the current year, the worst figure for at least 15 years (between 7 billion and 8 billion the market had grown in the second half of the nineties ), down from 8.7 billion in 2019 (-18%).
The estimate of the Politecnico therefore, in the end, is not very different from that of GroupM, while Nielsen’s remains more ‘optimistic’ than the others so far.
Relevant data, according to the Observatory, will also decline online advertising for the first time in many years; with 2.8 billion total deposits compared to 3.3 billion in 2019, the expected figure is therefore -14%. The over the top will also pay duty, at -13%, representing 77% of the investment in the sector. Analyzing the various online channels, the collection relating to videos, leader in the growth of the Internet market in recent years, will drop by around 12%, “affected both by the objective difficulties linked to the creation and production of content in the months of the lockdown and by the slowdown in investments by SMEs “.
The contraction expected for the more traditional component of banners is over 15% and revenue from the purchase of space on search engines (-14%) and on e-commerce and classified advertising portals is also expected to decrease (- 21%). The Italian programmatic market, that is the channel for the sale of advertising spaces in real time based on the use of user data, will also be affected by the general decrease in 2020, with an initial closing estimate at the end of the year of around 480 million compared to to the 556 million collected in 2019.
The other means will be worse. Nuts: for publishers it is necessary to change the business model. For TV, the Politecnico estimates a decline in line with that of the Internet, while more significant decreases are expected for radio, press and out of home (over -20%). Overall, the media market in Italy, also considering consumer spending for the purchase and use of media, according to the Observatory, will contract by 14% to approximately 13.5 billion compared to 15.6 billion at the end. 2019.
In the overall revenues of the media world, if the slight decline in the market in 2019 (-2% compared to 2018) – explains the study – was almost entirely due to the paid media components (-4%), compared to an advertising component substantially stable, it will be the latter to score the worst performances in 2020.
“As far as the world of Media is concerned, we believe it is now clear that it is no longer possible for publishers to support their Value proposition solely through advertising sales, which will be significantly reduced this year” declared Giuliano Noci, Scientific Director Internet Media Observatory. “There is space and interest in paid content, if the content is interesting for the user. The ability to build increasingly segmented offers and to understand what the interests of individuals are are today a differential factor. It will therefore be necessary to carefully calibrate – concluded Noci – both the mix between generalist content and personalized content, and the mix of forms of enhancement of these same types of content, through advertising but also subscriptions “.
