Italians’ habits are changing: TV audience is decreasing. Every Italian watching TV, there are 3 Italians looking at a smartphone, tablet or pc, yet advertising doesn’t reach this new type of audience.
Auditel has reported a 4% decrease for TV ratings in 2019 first quarter. 10.6 million Italians watch television in the average day, 440.000 less than in 2018 first quarter. Whereas, Audiweb has observed that digital audience has reached 33.3 million in the average day. It seems that 2019 has marked mobile’s take over to the detriment of television.
Yet, advertising investments don’t reflect the new trend. Indeed Nielsen has reported that advertising investments in television amount to 64.5% (1.46 billion euros) in 2019 first quarter, whereas investments in digital only to 7.1%.
What are the explanations to advertising investments in digital’s slowdown? First, a cultural issue: the communication style is different, companies must interact with consumers in a new language. Second, economic interests: Google and Facebook control most mobile advertising, but they don’t recognize negotiation rights to media centers. Consequently, media centers invest in channels where they have higher commissions, namely television.
It is interesting how the situation is changing within digital advertising investments. Last year mobile has shorten the distance from pc. Investments in mobile have reached 41% with an amount of over 1.1 billion euros (Internet Media Observatory of Milan Polytechnic University). The data reflects the new habits of Italians who spend more and more time watching their smartphones.
