Western Europe saw an average year-on-year decline of 15% in TV advertising revenue across its key markets in FY 2020, ending the year on €16bn.
However, during the last quarter of the year broadcasters exceeded outlook expectations set in Q3. A second wave of COVID-19 infection rates at the beginning of Q4 created concern for economic recovery, but the markets showed resilience in the quarter, prompting IMF and OECD to upwardly revise their GDP forecasts for the year.
Although broadcasters across the region saw growth in H2 2020 compared to the record declines faced in the second quarter of the year, only a handful of broadcasters—TF1 (France), RTL (Germany), Atresmedia (Spain) and ProSiebenSat.1 (Germany)—saw year-on-year increases in TV ad revenue in Q4 2020.
Ongoing lockdown restrictions and the discovery of new variants across the region will hinder recovery in Q1 2021 compared to Q1 2020 but Ampere predicts strong year-on-year recovery in the second quarter of the year. Ampere currently predicts TV advertising in Europe will grow by 9.3% in 2021 to reach €17.5bn by the end of the year. However, this is still lower than the pre-COVID-19 TV ad revenue of €18.7bn seen in 2019.
Source:Ampere Analysis
