Net TV Advertising to Grow in 2008 Despite Recession Fears

Global net advertising revenues on television will reach US$123 billion in 2008, up 5.8 percent over 2007, according to a new report from Informa Telecoms & Media. This growth comes despite widespread fears of a global economic recession.

The report, “Global Net TV Advertising Forecasts,” says this rate is an improvement on the 3.5 percent global increase in 2007 and bases its optimistic outlook partly on the positive impact of the Olympics.

From this 2008 total, net pay TV advertising will bring in US$18 billion, a figure which has doubled over the last five years. Pay TV will represent 15 percent of total TV advertising in 2008.

By 2012, Informa Telecoms & Media forecasts that global net TV advertising will equate to US$148 billion, up 21 percent on the 2008 figure. However, Simon Murray, author of the report, said: “Net pay TV advertising will grow at a much faster rate—up 39 percent over the same period—to reach US$25 billion by 2012, or 17 percent of total TV advertising.

Murray emphasizes that such figures are for net advertising. “Informa believes that this is the first time that TV advertising forecasts for this many countries [44 in the report] have been homogenized and reflect only the revenues received by the channels and networks,” he said. “We have extracted agency commissions, production costs and, most importantly, we have removed discounts. Traditionally, advertising expenditure figures have been reported at rate card prices, that is, before discounts have been taken out.”