Portugal’s media in dire straits over advertising fall

Portugal’s media is fighting to survive after Covid-19 could lead to a fall in advertising revenues of between €85 million and €140 million for 2020.
This is the dire prediction for publicity investment without an upswing in Portugal’s economy in the second quarter according to Natália Júlio, head of media brands consultants Magna Portugal.

It is a trend that has been felt worldwide with losses of around US$42Bn for 2020 from US$582Bn to €540Bn).
“In truth, the Portuguese market never completely recovered from the last economic crisis given the limited growth in Portugal’s economy in recent years. The advertising market is a barometer of the overall economy and as a result the impact of the current crisis has been very significant in terms of falls in investment turnover,” said Júlio speaking to Dinheiro Vivo.
The effects of the 2009 crisis hung around in Portugal until 2013, with GDP falling between 1% and 4% year-on-year and advertising investment falling by two digits.
The greatest fall in revenues was in 2012 with real GDP contracting 4%. The crisis had a strong negative impact on advertising investment, resulting in non-digital media seeing a 22% fall after four quarters of consecutive declines in adverting investment.
Nevertheless, investments in digital media increased 18%, albeit at a lower rate in terms of the amounts charged.
The Coronavirus pandemic has the potential to be even more devastating. “The recession of 2020 is more severe with the latest IMF forecast (April 2020) pointing to real GDP falling by 8% this year before recovering in 2021 (+5%),” warns Magna.
Once again, this will hit publicity investment hard, with the media agency forecasting that investments in non-digital media will plummet by around 21% and digital media by 7%.
A recovery is expected in 2021 with the former growing by 4% and the latter by 14%.