Media Ad Spending Up by 32.1% in Argentina

Courtesy:ejc.net

Total media ad spending in Argentina topped ARS41.26 billion (nearly $5.1 billion) in 2014, up 32.1% year over year, according to the Cámara Argentina de Agencias de Medios (CAAM), reports eMarketer.com

Digital media and radio experienced the greatest improvements last year, each registering a 62.5% expansion. Cinema ad spending ranked third for annual growth, with a 36.4% increase. However, advertising unit sales improved by only 1.6%.

TV remained No. 1 for total media ad spending in Argentina, with a 39.7% share of the pie—or nearly ARS16.37 billion ($2.02 billion)—in 2014. Print media came in second, with more than ARS11.56 billion ($1.43 billion) equating to a 28.0% share. Both traditional media types, however, saw their market shares recede for the second year in a row. TV’s spending share dropped by 0.7 percentage point in 2013 and 0.6 percentage point in 2014, and print media’s portion fell 4.4 points and 2.5 points during the same time periods.

While radio experienced some sort of revival in 2014, tying internet ads for the highest growth, the nearly ARS1.73 billion ($213.1 million) spent in that medium represented merely 4.2% of the advertising market in Argentina last year.

Though ad spending is growing, the traditional advertising industry in Argentina is not out of the woods. CAAM also estimates the volume of ad units sold in most types of traditional media—seconds for TV, radio and cinema, and pages in the case of newspapers and magazines. By that metric, traditional media advertising growth was essentially flat in 2014, at 1.6% in constant base terms. Cinema scored the largest expansion, at 10.2%, and TV ad units sold in the metropolitan area of Buenos Aires rose 7.4%—the number of TV ad seconds sold in the rest of the country and on paid TV each expanded at a more contained 2.4% rate. Print media did much worse, with magazines losing 11.4% and newspapers sold in Buenos Aires dropping 3.5%.

With digital life pressing on in Argentina despite economic woes, internet ad spending has been the big winner in recent years. Not only have expenditures on digital ads grown at the fastest rate as of late, they are keeping that pace even as the base aggressively expands. As a result, the portion of advertising budgets allocated to the web has grown from 6.8% in 2012 to 12.8% in 2013 and 15.8% in 2014, according to CAAM—internet estimates are provided by the Interactive Advertising Bureau Argentina (IAB Argentina). In absolute terms, the CAAM report estimated digital ad spending totaled ARS6.50 billion ($801.5 million) last year.

eMarketer estimates that total media ad spending in Argentina will rise 25.5% this year, reaching $4.89 billion. At the same time, we expect digital ad spend to surge 32.0% to hit $430 million.

Source:eMarketer.com