Ad market flat, though digital advertisement up double digits

Home > Business > Industry

Ad market flat, though digital advertisement up double digits

Published: 09 Feb. 2021, 17:56 Updated: 09 Feb. 2021, 18:23

Cheil Worldwide headquarters in Itaewon, central Seoul. [CHEIL WORLDWIDE]

Covid-19 has taken a toll on domestic advertising.

While overall advertising expenditure was flat last year, digital advertising grew at double-digit rates while offline advertising declined.

Last year, 11.99 trillion won ($10.73 billion) was spent on advertising, down 0.8 percent from a year earlier, according to data provided by Cheil Worldwide, a marketing company 25.2-percent owned by Samsung Electronics, on Tuesday. The growth was led by digital advertising, which grew 13 percent on year to 5.71 trillion won. Mobile advertising grew 17.5 percent to 3.86 trillion won, while PC advertising grew 4.7 percent on year to 1.85 trillion won.

Covid-19 played a major role in driving the growth of digital advertising, as more people worked and studied at home using their digital gadgets.

Newspaper advertising inched down 2.4 percent on year to 1.39 trillion won, while magazine advertising declined 16.8 percent to 235.6 billion won. Radio and television advertising contracted 8.5 percent to 3.47 trillion won.

Advertising for theaters was hit hard, with the expenditure nosediving 72 percent on year to 60.1 billion won.

Cheil Worldwide said it expects the advertising market to grow 4.6 percent this year to 12.55 trillion won. It bet high on the digital market as contactless culture spreads from the virus. It projects the digital market to break 6 trillion won.

“The advertising market is projected to grow this year from last year due to expectation for economic recovery and the OECD’s [Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development] projection for Korea’s growth at 2.8 percent,” the company wrote in a statement. The company added it expects growth from television through indirect and intermittent advertisements.

BY JIN MIN-JI [jin.minji@joongang.co.kr]