South Korean ad revenues slump - Warc News

News: March 16, 2009

SEOUL: Advertising revenues in South Korea fell by 50% in the first two months of this year, with TV, radio, newspapers and magazines all suffering significant declines year-on-year.

According to Nielsen, TV ad revenues in January and February were $80 million (€62m; £52m), down from $200m in the year-ago period.

Print media also suffered heavy losses, with newspaper expenditure falling from $393 million in the first two months of 2008 to $152 million in the same timeframe this year.

Magazine advertising was also down from $33m to $13m, and radio marketing spend fell from $26m to a total of just $7m.

Steve Yi, Grey Korea's strategic planning director, said that many advertisers had taken the decision to scale back their budgets having adopted a "hold and see" approach at the onset of the financial downturn.

The overall decline was more substantial than the decline of 10% to 15% forecast by KOBACO, which also predicts that adspend will grow in April.

Data sourced from Brand Republic (Asia); additional content by WARC staff, 16 March 2009

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