Advertising sales in Ireland will grow by 5% in 2020 to €1.4bn according to the latest forecasts published by Magna part of IPG. This compares with a 4.3% increase in 2019, according to the forecast.
The bulk of the growth in the market will be driven by digital advertising which will grow by 9% in 2020, while linear ad sales (linear TV, print, radio, OOH) is likely to grow by 1% following a decade of consecutive declines.
Magna says that digital advertising sales grew by 11% in 2019 to €700m, with video advertising up by 22%, social up by 17% while search grew by 7%.
However, Magna expects digital growth to slow down to 9% in 2020 with video, social, and search continuing to drive growth.
“Ireland is a mature digital market slightly above the Western European average in terms of market share (53% vs 50%),” Magna notes in its latest global review.
It also anticipates that the pace of digital growth will continue to slow over the next five years (CAGR: 9.2%), the same trend seen across Europe.
Television spend, meanwhile, declined 3.4% in 2019 to €200m with free TV seeing the steepest declines (-4%) while pay TV (27% share of TV) was flat. 2020, however, will see a 2.5% increase in TV with a number of high profile events like the Olympics and the UEFA European Championships expected to drive some of the growth. Magna also mentions the new edition of popular reality show Love Island, Love Island South Africa, which will also launch in 2020, as contributing factors to the growth and increased demand.
