Too much credit for TV

Advertising sales Higher gross advertising sales in the first half of 2004 make us happy. Media Focus less so.

Advertising sales Higher gross advertising sales in the first half of 2004 are a source of joy. The media have been waiting a long time for this moment: for the first time in three years, advertising clients are investing more in traditional advertising in the first half of the year. Although gross sales still rose by a very modest 0.9 percent or 17.041 million Swiss francs, the joy is limited to two media categories in particular: television and magazines. However, the brilliant result of television, which increased its gross sales by a whopping 14.7 percent to over CHF 390 million, must be put into perspective. In view of the increased discrepancy between gross and net in times of crisis, particularly in advertising windows, these figures are clearly too high. Accordingly, the strong growth in TV market share from 18.6% to 21.1% should also be viewed with caution.
On the other hand, the loss of the daily press, whose gross sales fell by 2.8 percent compared to the first half of 2003, must be taken into account. Newspapers thus suffered an accelerated loss of market share from 40.1 to 38.6 percent.
Loss of information
The Media Focus semester figures for the poster, radio, cinema, teletext and Internet media do not provide any transparency. Their figures no longer appear individually, but only in summarized form. This means that it is impossible to track the development of the five advertising media mentioned.
The reason for the highly unsatisfactory loss of information lies in the well-known problem with poster advertising: because in many cases there is a time gap between posting and invoicing, Media Focus is no longer allowed to publish these data individually.
What is difficult to understand is the fact that for years the
solution has still not been found to this pressing problem. "This is unsatisfactory, but unfortunately it can hardly be changed in the near future," regrets Lukas Zihlmann, Managing Director of Media Focus.
Television is making a splashDevelopment of gross advertising revenues of the Swiss media in the first half of 2004 (in CHF 1000)
Medium Year January-June Market share
2003 735494 40.1%
Daily press 2004 714974 38.6%
+/- -2.8%
2003 437565 23.8%
Magazines 2004 440199 23.8%
+/- 0.6%
2003 340607 18.6%
Television 2004 390750 21.1%
+/- 14.7%
2003 321214 17.5%
Other media* 2004 305997 16.5%
+/- -4.7%
2003 1834880
total 2004 1851921
+/- 0.9%
* Billboard advertising, radio, cinema, teletext, Internet Source: Media Focus
Migros brings joyThe largest advertising clients in Switzerland in the
1st semester 2004 (in 1000 Swiss francs)
Company January-June
2004 2003 +/-
1 Migros (Det. trade) 122156 108803 12.3%
2 Coop (Det. trade) 112513 118316 -4.9%
3 Amag 32118 30762 4.4%
4 Unilever 23270 22897 1.6%
5 Nestlé 23053 21215 8.7%
6 L'Oréal 20161 21217 -5.0%
7 Swisscom 19476 22690 -14.2%
8 Procter+Gamble 19381 15683 23.6%
9 Renault Nissan 15766 15396 2.4%
10 Masterfoods 15670 16933 -7.5%
Source: Media Focus
Daniel Schifferle

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