Archive notice: This article was originally published on October 10, 2007. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
Thus, according to Nielsen Media Research, the recognized media and advertising research company, gross advertising expenditure in the classic media rose during this period by plus 4.0 percent or plus 564 million euros to a total of 14.6 billion euros compared with the previous year.
“If one looks at the development of the gross advertising market this year, we recorded above-average growth in the first quarter and slight growth in both the second quarter and the third quarter.
For the fourth quarter, we likewise expect slight growth again and accordingly an overall positive annual development of the gross advertising market – for the fifth year in a row,” Ludger Wibbelt, managing director of Nielsen Media Research GmbH, analyzes the course of the 2007 advertising year.
With an increase of almost 82 million euros, the passenger-car industry increased its advertising expenditure most strongly in the first nine months. In the first two quarters in particular, the automotive industry countered the dip in sales with increased advertising placements, which unsettled many consumers when buying passenger cars, among other things because of the CO2 limit-value debate and the introduced increase in value-added tax at the beginning of the year. Ludger Wibbelt: “The increased advertising investments by automotive manufacturers will admittedly continue until the end of the year through the introduction of new models, although not at quite such a high level. The strong
growth drivers in the first nine months, such as Toyota with Germany’s largest poster campaign to date, will probably show somewhat more restraint in advertising.”
Despite reduced advertising expenditure by discount stores, the retail organizations, as the industry with the strongest advertising, invested an additional 63 million euros in their advertising from January to September 2007. The retail brands in particular can clearly be recognized as the industry’s growth drivers. “The discount stores no longer dominate
the advertising market as clearly in 2007. Alongside price, consumers are also once again placing value on quality and service. The major retail brands, such as Rewe and Edeka, take this trend into account in their current campaigns,” Ludger Wibbelt summarizes.
In contrast to this is the advertising expenditure of the telecommunications industry, which, at minus 46.4 million euros, recorded the highest absolute declines to date in the 2007 advertising year. Last year and also in the first quarter of this year, this industry had put its stamp on the advertising market with its price battles and only held back massively with its advertising placements in the last two quarters.
An interesting development can be observed among energy suppliers, which admittedly reduced their image advertising in the first quarter but increased it massively in the second and third quarters. Alongside the active advertising of cheap-electricity brands, the renaming of the energy group RAG as Evonik, which advertises its services with an extensive advertising campaign amounting
to 24.1 million euros so far, is also decisive for this growth.
With the exception of consumer and specialist magazines, the classic media recorded increases in their advertising revenues. The decline in the two print media is due, among other things, to the media themselves, which in some cases significantly
reduced their advertising expenditure. The picture is different, by contrast, for poster and television advertising, which benefited in particular from the passenger-car industry. In daily newspapers, their own placements contributed to growth, while the increase in radio advertising revenues is primarily attributable to the retail organizations.
Total gross advertising revenues were distributed among the individual media types in the first nine months of 2007 as follows: With almost 6.0 billion euros, television advertising continued to record the highest advertising revenues in the classic media. This corresponds to strong growth of 6.4 percent compared with the
previous year. Advertising revenues of daily newspapers grew by 2.7 percent to 3.9 billion euros, whereby classified advertisements are not included in the Nielsen Media Research statistics. Consumer magazines recorded a decline of 1.3 percent compared with the first nine months of 2006, with advertising revenue of 2.9 billion euros. The medium of radio was able to generate advertising expenditure of around 933 million
euros and thus achieve an increase of 8.4 percent compared with the previous year. Poster advertising revenues increased by 14.8 percent
to 577 million euros. At minus 2.0 percent, specialist magazines recorded the largest reductions within the classic media and generated approx.
325 million euros.