Digital advertising in 2023: key figures and forecasts
The unified barometer of the advertising market, or BUMP, is published each year by France Pub, IREP and Kantar Media. The study aims to produce an analysis of the evolution of the advertising market in France within the different sectors: digital & digital media, television, cinema, radio, press, outdoor advertising and addressing. To analyze trends, the barometer observes the total advertising revenue generated by the various media for advertisers. Unsurprisingly, digital advertising has been on the rise for several years. Does this trend hold true in 2023? Here are the barometer observations.
The growth of digital advertising continues
Digital advertising remains dominant in the 1st quarter of 2023
The first observation noted by the study is the overall slowdown in the advertising market in the first quarter of 2023 compared to 2022. Advertising revenue, all media combined, was 3.844 billion euros, a decrease of 0.7 % compared to Q1 2022.
In this first quarter, the choice of advertisers has largely focused on digital: display and paid search represent the main choices of advertisers in terms of advertising, ahead of print.
Here is the distribution of advertising channels in the first quarter of 2023, the channels relating to digital advertising are indicated in bold:
- Display: 13,116 advertisers,
- Paid Search: 11,270 advertisers,
- Print: 9,297 advertisers,
- Paid Social: 7,303 advertisers,
- OOH: 3,844 advertisers,
- Linear TV: 1,429 advertisers,
- Radio: 1,202 advertisers,
- DOOH: 1,128 advertisers,
- IPTV Replay: 771 advertisers,
- Digital audio: 549 advertisers,
- Cinema: 106 advertisers.
A slowdown in growth over the past year for digital advertising
On the other hand, if these practices remain in the majority – and are still on the rise – their growth seems to be slowing down. Indeed, revenues generated by digital advertising for companies have increased by 37.3% since the first quarter of 2019, but by only 3% since the first quarter of 2022.
Moreover, it is the more traditional media – TV, radio and the press* – that are doing well. These media are benefiting in particular from the strong dynamism of digital audio (+29.9% in advertising video (+14.4% in revenue in one year). This increase seems to confirm the trends observed in the report published in November 2022.
* The study refers to the extension of the media brand in digital, all formats and all sales combined.
Digital advertising: growth should increase in 2023
Although the growth of digital advertising is slowing down slightly, it remains in a positive dynamic compared to other formats. In fact, apart from cinema advertising, which saw a substantial increase in advertising revenue (+22.9%) and radio advertising, which managed to hold up (+1.2%), all the other non-digital advertising formats experienced a significant decline over the past year. Television, for example, is down 7.2% since the first quarter of 2022.
For 2023, this trend should continue. According to the study’s forecasts, the digital market should experience an overall increase in advertising revenue of around 5.6% over the year as a whole (+39.9% since 2019), with a total of receipts which would amount to 9.5 billion euros.
Conversely, the BUMP predicts a drop of 0.8% for the average of the 5 major media (Press, TV, Radio, Posters, Cinema). If this prediction is confirmed, it would represent a decrease of 5.3% compared to 2019.
