World Cup boost to global ad market

The media agency predicts that growth will continue to improve over the next two years, reaching 5.7% in 2015 and 6.1% in 2016, driven by continued economic recovery, including in the Eurozone.

According to ZenithOptimedia’s report, the FIFA World Cup will boost global ad spend by an estimated $1.5bn this year. The timing of the event has been a boost for the northern hemisphere in particular, delivering large television audiences and high interest in news media and sport websites, when people normally spend less time consuming media. ZenithOptimedia expects TV to benefit the most, although World Cup advertisers will spend more of their budgets on internet advertising, with social media activity more prevalent than during any previous sporting event.

Overall, the World Cup will have the biggest impact in Latin America, where the matches are ideally timed for Latin American viewers. It will add up to $500m to the Latin American ad market this year. And despite football being less of an interest to North American consumers, it is still expected to add an extra $300m to the region. A similar value boost is expected in Western Europe. The region seeing the least positive impact will be Asia Pacific, where time differences work against it the most. There additional spent is predicted to be $250m.

Elsewhere, the report points to the growth in mobile. Mobile advertising (i.e. all internet ads delivered to smart phones and tablets, whether display, classified or search and including in app ads) is growing 5.5 times faster than desktop internet. ZenithOptimedia forecasts mobile advertising to grow by an average of 49% a year between 2013 and 2016, driven by the rapid adoption of smart phones and tablets, and the increasing use of mobiles for search and consuming media. Desktop internet advertising is predicted to grow at an average of 9% a year.