Traditional media
A decline in ad spending was particularly clear in newspaper advertising. Between 2011 and 2020, newspaper ad revenue dropped from one billion euros to less than 350 million. Magazine advertising has also been contracting. In contrast, traditional broadcast advertising still maintained a sizeable market share. Television has been the most profitable standalone advertising medium, with TV ad spending projected to return to pre-pandemic values starting 2022.
Digital media
2020 marked the year in which digital outranked television in becoming the largest advertising shareholder in the country. This however did not prevent digital’s revenue from decreasing in 2020, albeit to a lesser extent than every other medium. Like television, digital ad spending was also projected to rebound to pre-pandemic values in 2022, before proceeding to grow to more than 3.5 billion euros before 2025. Paid search internet advertising was the only digital format that did not experience a contraction during the pandemic.
Consumer perception
Given television’s favored role in Spain, it comes as no surprise that it was the leading location for Spaniards to come across advertisements, followed by social media and ad videos on YouTube. In a survey about advertising attitudes, more than half of respondents said they did not mind ads if they got free content in return, while four in ten said they were often annoyed by internet ads. Little more than one fifth of Spaniards said they trusted social media advertising, with recent studies revealing that only a few users feel curious enough to tab or click on them.
