Billetts forecasts £198m TV ad revenue drop in 2009

Billetts, part of Ebiquity, the media and marketing analytics business, also forecasts that TV ad revenues will end 2008 down 5% on 2007, at £3.09bn.

Billetts also forecasts that ITV’s ad revenues will drop by £100m next year, while Channel 4 will drop £48m and Five will be down £16m. Sky’s advertising revenues will be down 9% from 2007, while IDS, the sales house for, among others, Setanta and Virgin Media TV, will be broadly flat year on year.

However, the report says that TV audiences look set to increase for the eighth year in a row, resulting in cheaper advertising prices for all key buying audiences. The cost of ad slots that will attract adults will be 18% cheaper than in 2007, it adds.

In addition, Billetts expects national press advertising to fall by £43m (-7%) in 2009. It expects a switch towards cheaper mono ads, with lower colour revenues – a reverse of the trend seen in 2008.

Billetts works with more than 200 advertisers in the UK. Its advertising monitoring division, Billetts Media Monitoring, captures advertising activity across all major channels and applies pricing data from Billetts’ media auditing database of £3bn of UK advertising spend.

This article was first published on Media Week