Amazon’s advertising business pulled in US$37.7 billion (AU$55.40 billion) — more than the entire global print advertising market.
The entire global publishing ad market — including digital advertising — will be worth $47.2 billion (AU$69.36 billion) in 2023, a decline of 7.7 per cent year-on-year.
“For newsbrands and magazines, modest increases in digital ad revenue have been insufficient to compensate for print ad income losses. Global publishing print advertising revenue has halved in the last six years, from $75.9bn in 2016 to $37.3bn in 2022,” said Alex Brownsell, head of content, WARC Media, which carried out the research.
“While Meta is launching a paid verification service reducing its reliance on ad revenues, content-creating media owners have not given up on the ad market. Netflix and Spotify are just two platforms to see high margin advertising as a means of achieving profitability, and mitigating any softness in the subscription economy as consumers negotiate cost of living pressures.”
WARC also found that $4 in every $10 spent on advertising globally gets spent on Alphabet, Amazon, or Meta. Global spend on video, audio, publishing, and OOH is expected to be just 1.6 per cent higher than it was in 2016.
2023 is expected to be a great year for retail media, however. According to WARC, it is the fastest-growing channel and will be worth US$122 billion (AU$179 billion) by the end of the year. This will make retail media more valuable than linear TV by 2025 and has been driven by the depreciation of third-party cookies and tightening privacy rules.
Streaming services are set for a hard year with more than half of consumers cutting back on SVOD subscriptions in favour of ad-supported streaming services. This will be good news for advertisers, provided that the price for a spot is right.
