Western Europe saw an average year-on-year decline of 15% in TV advertising revenue across its key markets in 2020, ending the year on €16 billion. However, during the last quarter, broadcasters exceeded outlook expectations set in Q3. A second wave of Covid-19 infection rates at the beginning of Q4 created concern for economic recovery, but the markets showed resilience in the period, prompting IMF and OECD to upwardly revise their GDP forecasts for the year, according to Ampere Analysis.
Although broadcasters across the region saw growth in the second half of 2020 compared to the record declines faced in the second quarter of the year, only a handful of broadcasters—TF1 (France), RTL (Germany), Atresmedia (Spain) and ProSiebenSat.1 (Germany)—saw year-on-year increases in TV ad revenue in Q4 2020.
Ongoing lockdown restrictions and the discovery of new variants across the region will hinder recovery in Q1 2021 compared to Q1 2020, but a strong year-on-year recovery is expected in the second quarter of the year. Ampere currently predicts TV advertising in Europe will grow by 9.3% in 2021 to reach €17.5 billion by the end of the year. However, this is still lower than the pre-Covid-19 TV ad-revenue of €18.7 billion seen in 2019.
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