Spain's TV advertising income falls
Written by Iñaki Ferreras
Tuesday, 12 January 2010 18:15
Spain's TV advertising income tumbled in Q3 last year.
According to latest report from the Telecommunications Market Commission (CMT). In particular these incomes were E472,77m whereas a year before the total was almost E700 million. This converts to a fall of 32.15%. In Q3 of 2008 when the economic crisis was already a reality present the audiovisual sector got advertising revenues for E567,75 million. So the fall in just one year was 16,73%.
The effects of the crisis also had repercusions in the PPV business decreasing notably. So in Q3 of 2008 its incomes were E36.9 million and in Q3 last year were cut down to half, or E19.70m.
But the decrease of the advertising income is special and in the case of Spain's private broadcasters that income fell in just one quarter from E407,37 million to E273 million.
However, in spite of this overall downturn the advertising minutes per hour sold did not follow the same pattern but increased. This means a continuous downturn in advertising rates charged in order not to lose advertisers. So in Q3 last year a total of 410.534 advertising minutes were broadcast while in the same period the previous year this figure stayed in 383.795 minutes.
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All in all the total income in the country's audiovisual sector in Q3 last year meant E1,161.89 million compared with E1,373.88 million in the same period of the previous year, and before E1.516,08 million in the second half of last year. The total incomes of this sector registered a downturn of 15,44% in comparison to the whole year and of 23,47% in comparison to Q3 in relation to Q2.
The Christmas period also saw the end of the advertising on the national public broadcaster Televisión Española-TVE, and the imminent merger of the national private broadcasters suggests a change in the trend.
Some experts already point out to an increase of the advertising prices this year as 'Rapid TV News' has already reported.
Although not all TVE's advertising will pass to its competitors the experts think the private TV channels will take advantage of this opportunity, and also the mergers in the case of the private channels are likely to result in an uplift in rate card prices of some 20%.
Finally, as a positive aspect in this sector there's has been a growth of subscribers in the pay-TV business in Q3 last year. In Q3 of 2008 there were 4,031,287 pay-TV subscribers. These figures fell last year but seems now to have recovered a little helped by pay-DTT and the PPV business.
The number of pay-TV subscribers was 3,910,649 million last year. But the most important pay-TV companies in Spain satellite TV operator Digital+'s Sogecable and cable operator Ono lost clients whereas Digital+Telefónica's DSL pay-TV business Imagenio gained subscribers with 654,255 total clients. Other smaller cableoperators than Ono, such as regional companies such as Telecable, R, Euskaltel and DSL pay-TV operator Jazztel, got more clients last year in relation to a year before.
(c) Rapid TV News 2010
