Out of Home continues triumphal procession in Corona Summer Hole
The August figures also show that the advertising industry is suffering from the coronavirus and is experiencing the summer slump. But there are some bright spots as well.
The summer slump in the Swiss advertising market continues. As in July, advertising print in August was well below the 400 million mark, at 357.6 million gross Swiss francs. This is the sixth time in a row that monthly advertising print has fallen below the figure for the same month last year. In August, the decline is 9.1 percent. The Federal Office of Public Health's coronavirus information campaign is back at the top of the most advertised products in the Swiss advertising market, and advertising print in the overall market is 17.1 percent below the previous year's figure YTD.
Classical media recovering slowly
A look at the media mix shows: Out-of-home advertising continues its triumphant march unperturbed, accounting for one-fifth of total advertising print in the Swiss advertising market in August. Compared to the previous year, out-of-home advertising print increased again (+25.9 percent), as in June and July. Meanwhile, the suffering of Swiss cinema advertising continues. Although cinemas have reopened their screens for up to 300 people since the beginning of June, cinema advertising print continues to decline. In August, it stands at around 0.8 million gross francs. This means that cinema advertising print is almost 70 percent lower than in August of the previous year. Internet advertising print also fell sharply year-on-year (-31.7%). This means that the share of Internet advertising is down from 32 percent in July to just 22 percent in August. TV advertising is able to recover somewhat in August, increasing its share of total advertising print by 5 percentage points compared with the previous month to a new 26 percent. Year-on-year, however, TV advertising print is still down in August, at minus 8.8 percent. Advertising print in radio (-5.9%) and print media (-3.4%) is at a similar level to August 2019.
Initiatives & campaigns at a voting high
In August, 8 of 21 sectors increased their advertising pressure year-on-year. Initiatives & Campaigns recorded the strongest increase with a rise of around one third, which is due to the upcoming referendum on September 27. With the "No to the Hunting Act" and the "Yes for moderate immigration" (limitation initiative), two representatives of the industry can be found among the top 10 products of the month. In addition, the cleaning industry (+26.4%), digital & household (+15.8%), energy (+11.8%) and telecommunication (+10.6%) saw double-digit year-on-year growth in August. In the market as a whole, there was a 9.1% year-on-year decrease in gross value added.
