Advertising alliance comes at the expense of national competition
The Weko has given the green light for the marketing alliance between Swisscom, SRG and Ringier. The effects will be felt above all by national media competitors. This is the result of a survey of experts by Publicom.
Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc. have also secured considerable market shares in the Swiss advertising market in recent years. Swisscom, SRG and Ringier say they want to join forces in a joint marketing organization to combat this and strengthen the Swiss market sustainably in globalized competition with a joint venture. The majority of the media experts participating in the DELPHInarium, on the other hand, are of the opinion that the strategy primarily hits the national competition. According to the opinion of more than three quarters of the experts, the alliance primarily benefits the participants. They would clearly gain market share. It is equally clear who the losers are. Not the global Internet giants Google and Co., whose strong market position is unlikely to change, but the domestic advertising marketers and the private radio and TV stations and media houses will suffer from the merger.
Price collapse in the advertising market?
The DELPHInarium is rather skeptical about possible growth effects on the Swiss advertising market. The majority do not believe that the joint venture will have a positive impact on the growth of the Swiss advertising market in the next few years. Some even fear a price collapse, as advertising customers would demand the synergy gains in the form of reduced prices. However, various respondents point out that it is still hardly known exactly what the marketing alliance entails and that other national players could also join. The quintessence of the experts' opinion is that the broadest possible support for the joint venture is probably the best way to prevent the outflow of advertising money abroad from accelerating further.
Under the term DELPHInarium, Publicom, a company specializing in media research and consulting, publishes the results of a survey of experts twice a year. The panel includes forty experts from leading media companies as well as representatives from advertising, media journalism, communications science and corporate communications.
Read the entire report here.
