Audiovisual advertising grew 9% in 2021
Advertising revenues earned by companies in the audiovisual sector showed noticeable signs of recovery last year after COVID-19, although without reaching pre-pandemic levels.
The figure amounted to €1,973.5 million, 9% more than in 2020, although it is also 9% below that recorded in 2019, according to the CNMC’s latest annual report on the audiovisual sector. Advertising in this area in 2021 performed better than the previous year on all three sides: in DTT, it improved by 9% to €1,518.3 million; in radio, it increased by 11% to €332.4 million; and in pay operators, by 3.9% to €123.4 million.
This last indicator has the particularity of being the only one that has been progressively improving without being affected by COVID-19. In fact, in 2020, pay-TV operators earned 9 million euros more than in 2019, and experts expect it to continue to progress favourably in the coming years.
In 2021, 5.2 million minutes of advertising, sponsorship and teleshopping were broadcast, 12.8% more than in 2020. This generalized increase was driven, on the one hand, by a greater broadcasting of advertising content by pay-TV operators – which increased by 21.4% compared to 2020 – and, on the other hand, by the recovery of advertising occupancy by free-to-air TV operators, which recorded a year-on-year growth of 11.1% in 2021, thus exceeding the advertising occupancy of 2019, although without reaching the same level of revenue.
Advertising revenues rise as TV consumption falls
The upturn in advertising in the audiovisual sector takes place in a context in which television consumption has not only plummeted compared to the year of confinement -27 minutes of average consumption per person per day-, but at 214 minutes it is the lowest level of television consumption in the entire historical series, which dates back to 2006, according to Kantar Media.
Of the 214 minutes consumed on average per person per day, 199 were linear, 7 were deferred and 8 were guest consumption -which includes the consumption of viewers who are not regular residents in the home where they watch TV-. On the other hand, 73% of this consumption time was via DTT channels, compared to 26% corresponding to pay-TV platforms (IPTV, cable TV and satellite TV), with IPTV technology having the highest share with 17% of viewing time.
