German advertising market continues to grow in 2022 and may exceed pre-Covid levels

Hamburg, 13 January 2022. The experts at the JOM Group, an agency for hybrid marketing communication, forecast a further increase in advertising spend in Germany of 3.7 to 5.5 per cent for 2022. Due to the general conditions that are continuing to be heavily influenced by the pandemic, the forecast of further economic development is again based on two different scenarios.

According to JOM’s calculations, net advertising spend in Germany had already risen a good 5 per cent in the past year, 2021. However, this means that the advertising market in this country, worth approx. €22.2 billion, has not yet reached the pre-Covid level from 2019.

If current forecasts for economic development in Germany actually materialise, this threshold could finally be surpassed again this year. Advertising expenditure in Germany could then once again exceed €23.3 billion.

If growth in gross domestic product and private consumption in the coming year is significantly below current forecasts from the research institutes, this will also affect the advertising market. In such a conservative scenario, JOM Group expects the German advertising market to grow by around 3.7 per cent.

Growth of advertising environments: high increase in digital moving image formats along with outdoor advertising may gain ground

Traditional media such as TV, radio or outdoor advertising could also grow. These are riding the wave of positive economic development, with outdoor advertising in particular still catching up on what was lost during the lockdown.

Stronger digital media use and an increased ratio of e-commerce will lead to high growth rates in digital advertising environments in 2022, as was also seen in the previous year. This particularly applies to digital video and mobile online advertising.

According to JOM, this development is driven by “new” advertising environments featuring high growth rates, such as TikTok and Twitch. They not only create new forms of advertising, but now have mass reach, especially in the young target groups. The overall area of “Connected TV” with the addressable TV offers will also develop very positively, say the experts at JOM. The market continues to show strong demand for more precise targeting in the video sector and alternatives to traditional placements in the TV advertising block.

“We are still in a phase where advertising companies want as much flexibility as possible with regard to their media bookings. Availability of goods is uncertain, while further restrictions could be imposed at any time due to the pandemic. Nevertheless, advertising space in the TV medium, for example, was almost fully booked in the last quarter of 2021. We are still some way away from this in the digital arena due to the larger amount of available inventory, but demand was enormous here too. So we are basically very positive about the outlook for 2022. Companies in Germany are very keen to advertise, provided that the pandemic doesn’t throw a spanner in the works at some point,” says Volker Neumann, Managing Director JOM Group.

Based on market performance data, JOM’s forecast anticipates that average media prices will increase by around 3.2 per cent in the coming year. The main drivers here are print media.