The French advertising market lost 7.3 billion euros in investments in 2020, a fall that began suddenly during the first confinement and which could only be caught up during the rest of the year for digital media, according to a report released Tuesday.
Read also: The French advertising market should rebound strongly in 2021
Taking into account a gradual reopening of the economy in 2021, without new national confinement, the sector forecasts a rebound of 13.2% in 2021, affecting all media and allowing it to return to nearly 30 billion euros, argued the authors of the Unified Barometer of the Advertising Market (Bump) at a press conference.
Over the past year, the communication market stood at 26.5 billion euros, a decrease of 21.6% globally in line with the forecasts established in May 2020 by this study which compiles data from the Institute for Research and Advertising Studies (Irep), France Pub and Kantar Media.
Increase in digital investments
Spending by advertisers on the 5 historical media (press, TV, radio, outdoor advertising, cinema) fell 19.5% to 6.9 billion euros.
They are now almost on par with advertising investments in digital media (banners and video inserts, search engines, social networks, marketing applications) which still remain positive (+ 0.5% to 6.8 billion euros) , benefiting in particular from the continued growth of the Google / Facebook duopoly.
According to the report, digital has also benefited from a "transfer phenomenon" of investments from "other media" (direct marketing, exhibitions, advertising mail, public relations, etc.), a category which remains very dependent on physical events. and which collapsed over the period by 30.8%, to 12.8 billion euros.
Read also: Digital advertising exceeds $ 100 billion in the United States
For the media, this drop in investment led to a decrease in revenue of 11.4% and the loss of almost one in 10 advertisers. Television saw its annual revenue fall by 11% to 3 billion euros, and experienced a 20% drop in advertising volumes, a sign according to the study's authors that advertisers have reserved their reduced budgets for free-to-air channels with high audiences and the largest and most expensive niches.
The fall is a little stronger for the radio at 12.7% (623 million euros) which nevertheless experienced a strong catching up during the summer.
On the press side, newspapers and magazines suffered throughout the year, worsening the structural decline in their advertising revenues to -23.7% (1.6 billion euros), driven in particular by a drop in volumes and the number of advertisers in national dailies.
