After the excellent May, which was 15.2 percent up on the previous year, the advertising month of June can only disappoint with an increase of just 2.9 percent compared to the previous year, as it was the Football World Cup. However, the cumulative advertising year 2006 is still 5.5% up on the previous year - record figures
since the start of the measurement, according to Media Focus.
Television in particular benefited from the World Cup with an increase of 15.6%. Daily newspapers also saw an increase of 12.9%.

The following key markets increased their advertising investments in June compared to the previous year: household articles/appliances (+70%), transport (+38%), finance (+36%), watches/jewelry (+32%) and telecommunications (+27%). The key markets of beverages (-29%), tobacco (-27%) and vehicles (-19%) invested significantly less than in June 2005.

In the ranking of the largest advertisers, Migros is once again in first place ahead of Coop. Nestlé had already swapped places with Swisscom in May and is still in 3rd place, followed by Swisscom in 4th place.

Media Focus has been measuring and recording gross advertising investment in the traditional advertising media of print (newspapers/magazines), television, radio, posters, cinema, teletext and the Internet in Switzerland since 1990. Media Focus is a joint venture between the two global market research companies IHA-GfK AG and ACNielsen SA/Nielsen Media Research.

According to a study by the Pew Research Center in Washington, the Internet of all things has helped to stabilize the shrinking newspaper readership. The study summarizes that the Internet has helped national newspapers the most.
Today, one in three people would regularly get their news from the Internet. Young readers in particular would prefer the new medium to printed newspapers. 29 percent of Americans under the age of 30 read a newspaper, print or online. If you take the figures for print and online together, the proportion of young readers has remained stable overall over the last ten years. 20 percent read print exclusively, 7 percent read online only and 2 percent read both. So while it can be said that the Internet is helping newspapers to retain their young readership, there is no comparable result for the other age groups - here readership figures are falling steadily.

Online newspapers have also increased the reach of national newspapers, according to one of the other findings of the study. While 9 out of 10 people only read local newspapers in print, the local reference only plays a role for 50 percent of online readers.

The cosmetics company Trybol from Neuhausen in the canton of Schaffhausen has filed a criminal complaint against the cosmetics company La Prairie for misuse of the Swiss trademark. The company had already lost a similar complaint and appeal before the Fairness Commission of the Swiss Advertising Association. At that time, the company had sued for a product that used "... of Switzerland" on the packaging, although the item was 100 percent manufactured in Germany. La Prairie has some of its products manufactured in the USA, but still labels them "Switzerland".
Trybol had already attracted attention in March when the company placed an advertisement looking for like-minded people in the fight against misleading indications of source and the misuse of the Swiss brand (see
Trybol calls for the fight against misuse of the Swiss trademark). Now the Council of States is also calling for better protection of the Swiss trademark (see Council of States calls for better protection of the Swiss trademark).

The volume of advertisements in the daily and regional weekly press increased by 0.7 percent compared to June last year. According to Wemf AG für Werbemedienforschung, commercial advertisements recorded a decline of 3.5 percent. Only income from job advertisements again showed a significant increase of 20.1 percent.
The Sunday press recorded a decline of 9.9%. The financial and business press saw a decline of 1.1 percent. The total volume of the general press increased by 1.0% compared to the previous year.

The specialty press saw a drop of 8.9 percent in June 2006, while the advertising volume of the trade press increased by 5.8 percent. As always, the figures for the specialty and trade press refer to page volumes.

The Web2com Index for Internet advertising rose by 6.5 points to 122 points in May and by 3.6 points to 125.6 points in June. Compared to the same month last year, the index performed around 11% better.
The Bluewin data that has been missing since January 2006 has now been reintegrated into Web2com's sales figures. The figures already published have also been corrected retroactively for the previous months. As a result, the web2index curve looks more positive, but also more realistic compared to the Swiss online market, Web2com announced.

The Federal Office of Communications (OFCOM) has opened supervisory proceedings against surreptitious advertising against 18 TV stations. This year, ten national and regional-language stations and 13 local stations were inspected, resulting in a total of 18 supervisory proceedings being initiated, reports the SDA news agency. As Bakom announced at the annual media conference in Biel on Wednesday, Viva Schweiz, U1 TV, Ticino television TSI and Tele Tell remain without proceedings. The evaluation of another local broadcaster is still in progress. A total of 2800 minutes of broadcasting time were screened, which corresponds to just under 47 hours. 1500 minutes were allocated to the national and regional language stations, 1300 minutes to the 13 local stations. Two to three broadcasting formats were selected per station, of which two to four broadcasts were checked. The broadcasts were checked for compliance with the regulations on advertising and sponsorship. The inspectors paid particular attention to advertising in editorial programs, as this can mislead the audience and commercial influences cannot be ruled out in program design, the press release continues. Half of the proceedings relate to surreptitious advertising in the narrower sense, while the majority of the others concern the lack of and inadequate declaration of sponsors. At the press conference, Bakom Director Martin spoke of a delicate development. The tendency to mix editorial contributions and advertising, which has been noticeable for several years, continues.

In the first half of 2006, Radio DRS lost reach but gained market share. Private radio stations increased overall in both categories. General radio usage fell slightly: in the same period last year, a total reach of 91.6 percent was achieved, this year it is 91.3 percent. This is according to the new figures from Publica Data, which were collected using Radiocontrol. A total of 15,303 people took part in the survey. In total, an average of 111.4 hours of radio were listened to in Switzerland in the past six months. 
 
The DRS radios achieved a reach of 62.8%, which corresponds to just under 2.8 million listeners. DRS 1 lost the most reach, namely 1.7 percentage points, with a reach of 43.2% in the first half of the year. Among the DRS stations, DRS 2 (-0.9) and MW531 (-0.4 percentage points) were also among the losers. The two SRG stations for younger listeners made slight gains: DRS 3 and Virus each gained 0.2 percentage points in reach.
 
In the Zurich area, Radio 24 continues to have the largest reach with 6.1%. Energy Zürich follows in second place with 4.6%, Radio Top achieved 4.5% and Zürisee 4.3% net reach throughout Switzerland.
In the capital region, the station BE1 is ahead of its competitor Capital FM: BE1 has a reach of 2.5 percent, while Capital FM has a reach of 1.7 percent. The latter station has only been on air since the beginning of the year, replacing Extra Bern and already outperforming its predecessor: Capital FM was tuned in by 75,600 listeners, while the figure for Radio Extra Bern was 67,000 in the last six months (see also The first 100 days of Capital FM).
 
The reach of Radio Grischa has fallen significantly: the Grisons station had a reach of 2.3 percent in the first half of 2005, compared with 1.8 percent in the previous six months.
 
In French-speaking Switzerland, Radio Suisse Romande (RSR) increased its market share by 0.2 percentage points to 57.2% and can count on 785,000 listeners. Option Musique in particular increased its share of the market from 7.6 to 8.8 percent. La Première, on the other hand, fell slightly from 41.4 to 40.8 percent.
 
Among the private stations in French-speaking Switzerland, Lausanne FM is in the lead with a market share of 3.2%. In Ticino, Radio RSI increased its market share from 69.5% in the first half of 2005 to 71.3%.
 
In Germany, too, fewer people are listening to the radio, as the industry service Heise reports: Stations lost a total of 329,000 listeners per average broadcast hour, which corresponds to a loss of -1.6 percent.

The Vaud-based TV encryption specialist Kudelski has recovered after a brief stock market dip: shares rose by 5.7 percent to 27.70 francs on Wednesday, as Moneycab reports. On Tuesday, the shares fell by up to 10.6 percent. The reason was a report in the "Los Angeles Times" about a possible takeover of Kudelski customer EchoStar by the American satellite TV provider DirecTV. The latter is part of Rupert Murdoch's empire. According to the Tages-Anzeiger, analysts feared that Kudelski could lose EchoStar as a customer as a result of the takeover and thus also lose sales. The situation has now apparently eased and the rumor has not been substantiated. Kudelski CFO Mauro Saladini also calmed the dust by stating that Kudelski would still be profitable without EchoStar.

Energy Zurich gained 0.1 percent reach in German-speaking Switzerland in the past six months and reached around 203,700 net listeners, according to figures from Publica Data. In the 15+ target group, listenership increased by 6 percent, as the station announced in a press release. This makes Energy Zurich the number 2 among Swiss private radio stations after Radio 24. The number of listeners in the 15 to 24 target group grew by 5 percent. The morning show "Energy Mein Morgen" with Reto Peritz and Roman Kilchsperger gained 5 percent new listeners in the 15+ target group, according to the Energy communiqué. This makes it the most listened to morning show on Swiss private radio from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. on weekdays.

The Zurich advertising agency Publicis, together with dialog marketing specialist Fisch.Meier, has prevailed in a competitive presentation and won Postmail as a client. According to a press release, an umbrella campaign will be used to establish the Postmail brand more strongly, particularly among business customers. The mandate includes classic advertising and direct marketing tasks.

The midland station Radio 32 was able to slightly increase its daily listenership in German-speaking Switzerland from 139,500 in the first half of 2005 to 141,100 last semester. This is the result of the radio control figures from Publica Data. The daily listening time shows an average radio consumption of 55.1 minutes per day. This puts Radio 32 in second place among private radio stations in terms of listening time behind Radio Eviva, which has a listening time of 55.6 minutes. With 97,800 daily listeners in the actual broadcasting area between Aarau, Solothurn and Bern, Radio 32 is in second place across all target groups, as the station announced. DRS 1 reached 147,100 listeners in the broadcasting area and DRS3 73,700. In the target group of 15 to 49-year-olds, Radio 32 leads with 71,200 daily listeners, ahead of DRS3 with 55,200 and DRS1 with 53,500 users.

The Geneva-based poster advertising company Affichage has been reprimanded by the SWX Swiss Exchange for violating corporate governance guidelines. These guidelines require companies to provide the required information. If the information is not disclosed, this must be justified in the annual report.
The Affichage annual report 2004 lacked clear information on the change of control clauses. It was not clearly formulated whether Affichage had change of control clauses or not, according to the explanatory statement. One example of such clauses are severance payments for top management, also known as "golden parachutes".
According to the SDA news agency, Affichage has also violated the Listing Rules, as the duty of disclosure and notification was only partially complied with.