Swiss advertisers are increasingly focusing on entertainment
1. foreign advertising windows dominate the TV advertising market as never before
The share of advertising windows of foreign private offerings in the TV advertising market increased from 35 to just under 60 percent from 2002 to 2013. In the same period, the share of public TV in the Swiss TV advertising market fell from 62 to 33 percent.
2. private TV entertainment offerings in Switzerland have greater success in advertising revenues than private TV offerings with information journalism
This is shown, for example, by the success of the entertainment-oriented station 3+, which has increased its gross advertising revenues since its launch in 2006 to CHF 91 million in 2013. In the same period, the news channel Tele M1 was only able to increase its revenues from 5.9 to 7.4 million. "Information public service is hardly worthwhile in terms of advertising revenue in Switzerland compared to pure entertainment," the yearbook's main findings state. "That is why investments in private television flow primarily into entertainment offerings such as Joiz, 3+, 4+ and now 5+. The private stations with information offerings must be supported by public fee money." The user group of information programs on private TV in Switzerland, like public radio, is "overaged" and thus only conditionally lucrative for the advertising industry.
3. advantage of entertainment also in time-shifted use.
Time-shifted use on the Internet increases the reach of entertainment offerings in advance. At around 25 percent, time-shifted consumption of movies, series and children's programs is significantly higher than that of information programs, only around 10 percent of which are used non-linearly.
4. entertainment shifts to new pay-as-you-go, non-linear platforms that squeeze traditional, linear television
This refers, for example, to platforms such as Zattoo or Wilmaa, as well as on-demand offerings from Swisscom and Cablecom. "The convergence of television, search engines, online categories and social networks on the home television as well as on computers, smartphones and tablets benefits from the fact that the audience's willingness to buy is much greater with regard to entertainment than for information journalism," the researchers say. "So while overall household media spending will increase, at the same time purchase revenues such as advertising dollars for information journalism will decrease.""No deliberate shift of advertising revenue to entertainment"Roland Ehrler, Director of the Swiss Advertisers Association (SWA), emphasizes that TV has always been an entertainment medium, whether on private or public stations. At the same time, TV producers today would also stage news and information programs with a high entertainment value. "Anyone who wants to do without these stagings has to read quality newspapers, listen to the radio or look for the information themselves on the Internet," Ehrler said.According to the SWA director, advertisers follow the respective target groups with their campaigns. "At the same time, the TV landscape has changed a lot in recent years. New channels have sprung up like mushrooms, and the range on offer is huge, both for viewers and for advertisers. It is therefore understandable that the public broadcasters have had to lose ground. After all, all TV stations want a piece of the Swiss advertising pie".Entertainment has an even higher weight at the private TV stations than at the public stations. "So it's not necessarily about a deliberate shift of advertising revenue in entertainment, but about reaching attractive target groups in the Swiss TV landscape with advertising," says Ehrler.More info on the yearbook is available at here. Author: Simon Wolanin
