Before taking a look at specific aspects of the newspapers and new media businesses, it is important to understand the significant role that the advertising plays in the media business. Advertising has really taken a big place not only in the Swiss market, but in its society as well. As citizens we are daily confronted with thousands of advertising messages from all kind of mediums. It is not coincidence if “the identification of ordinary people as „consumers‟ rather than „citizen‟ became increasingly common in the four decades after 1920.”(15) The media is for the most part filled with advertising messages and in certain cases it even dictates contents.
The advertising market has had to deal with a lot of changes these last few years. Due to the economical problems in the world, the investments have been reduced drastically from 2007 to 2009. The graphic below shows these fluctuations clearly:
(16)
As stated before, the difference between 2007 and 2009 is significant, as the revenues fell from 5.9 to 5.1 billion Swiss francs, which is drop of 13% in two years. Such a fall is unprecedented in the advertising market in Switzerland. Obviously the media suffered from this plunge. Almost all types were affected by these losses of revenue. In 2009 the fall of advertising sales was enormous in particular for economic newspapers (-30.1%), Sunday newspapers (-29.4%) and daily newspapers (-21.6%)17.
Here is a graphic of how the advertising market is divided in Switzerland in 2009:
(18)
The traditional press is by far the media that attracts the most advertising. 37% of the global Swiss expenses in advertising go to the newspapers. Although positive for the newspapers this number has to take into account the fact that in 2004 the percentage was higher, 43% to be exact. There is a difference in comparison to the other countries in Europe, where the television generally draws more advertising than newspapers. It must be noticed as well, that Internet does not figure on the list yet. On the next section its impact versus the advertising in the newspapers will be discussed.
15 Gorman and McLean, p. 76
16 Presentation brochure of the FSSP http://www.werbestatistik.ch/index.php?pid=48&l=fr
17 World Press Trends 2010
18 Presentation brochure of the FSSP http://www.werbestatistik.ch/index.php?pid=48&l=fr
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