Global advertising expenditure across television, newspapers, magazines and radio recorded a year on year drop of 7.2% for the first quarter of 2009, according to a global advertising trends report from Nielsen.
The report,
Global AdView Pulse reveals that the global economic crisis is taking its toll on the ad sector, with European countries taking the hardest hit, especially Spain (-28.2%), Ireland (-21.2%), Italy (-19.1%) and the UK (-14.7%).
In North America, the US was down 12.7%. Declines in global ad spend were stemmed somewhat, however, by the Asia Pacific region which posted only 2.3% reduction versus first quarter 2008. In Asia-Pacific, Indonesia showed the greatest growth because of the elections with an increase of 19.1%, and China maintained growth but to a much lesser degree (+2.5%), said Nielsen.
Global AdView managing director, Ben van der Werf, said: “The effects of the global financial crisis have certainly caught up with the ad sector in this latest quarter, especially in North America and Europe where virtually all of the territories we reported on recorded negative growth.
“Even China, which usually sees a boost in ad spend during Chinese New Year, posted subdued growth for the quarter of just 2.5% off the back of 17.1% growth in quarter four of 2008.”
Advertising across all four major media types (newspapers, television, magazines and radio) was down in the quarter. Magazines fared the worst of the four, down 17.4%, newspapers saw a 9.1% decline, while slow downs in television and radio advertising were more contained, -4.7% and -2.5% respectively.
ZenithOptimedia revised down its global ad forecast earlier this month, predicting that it will decline 8.5% this year, with the UK set to suffer a 10.5% fall (see ZenithOptimedia revises down global ad forecast).
In June, GroupM forecast a 5.5% fall in global adspend, to $417 billion this year. However, it said that there should be a mild recovery in 2010 when the decline is expected to ease to 1.4% (see GroupM forecasts a 5.5% drop in global adspend).
