Advertising revenues up again after Corona slump
According to the Stiftung Werbestatistik, the Swiss advertising industry is experiencing an upswing for the first time in many years. Sales rose by 5.4 percent last year. However, this growth is based on a particularly low basis for comparison, as advertising sales really collapsed during Corona.
In total, the Swiss advertising industry generated sales of just under CHF 4 billion in 2021, the foundation writes in a statement. Almost all media categories reported higher revenues than in 2020, it says. Thus, the situation has now eased somewhat. In the first Corona year, sales had still slumped to 3.7 billion.
Despite the increase: The local advertising industry is still a long way from pre-crisis levels. The values are almost 12 percent below the figures for 2019, when the advertising industry generated total sales of just under CHF 4.5 billion.
Cinema with almost 50 percent more advertising than in the previous year
The strongest growth in advertising sales was seen in cinemas. After cinemas had to close for a long time in 2020, making cinema advertising no longer attractive to companies, cinema advertising grew by 45.5 percent in 2021. Nevertheless, cinema advertising accounts for the smallest share of advertising revenues in Switzerland, with a share of 14 million (2.8%).
Online advertising also saw above-average growth of 22.1 percent. It accounts for almost 16 percent of total advertising revenues - not including search engine advertising and social media.
However, as last year, the biggest slice of the pie again fell to direct mail, which generated a 20.4 percent share of sales. Direct mail is understood to mean, for example, advertising catalogs sent by post, or telemarketing. This form of advertising had taken the top spot among advertising forms for the first time in the corona year 2020. After all, the majority of the advertising industry's target audience stayed at home.
Growth for the first time in 10 years
The advertising industry as a whole has recovered more strongly than the Swiss economy. Indeed, for the first time in around ten years, the advertising industry grew more than Swiss GDP (+3.7%), according to the release.
But it is also the first time since 2011 that the advertising industry has been able to achieve growth at all. That was last the case in 2011 in the wake of the economic crisis. Since then, the money flowing into advertising has declined steadily every year. (SDA/swi)
