No reprieve for publishers as the digital shift accelerates

Traditional media saw advertising investment decline by double-digits in 2020 and, to make it worse for publishers, print newspapers and magazines are the only media to recover none of last year’s lost value. Instead, a shift to digital is the strategy of choice for many advertisers.

• Globally, WARC Data estimates that newspaper and magazine print advertising revenue fell by a quarter last year, following almost a decade of decline. Travel & tourism, one of the worst hit sectors by COVID-19, is the fourth largest print advertiser and cut investment by almost a third.
• This year will offer little in terms of a bounce-back, with the total level of print investment expected to be largely flat.
• For many publishers, though, digital activity has been the area of growth: data from the Advertising Association and WARC shows that digital ad revenue doubled in value between 2011 and 2019. Over the same period, print investment more than halved.