Digital surpasses written press to become #2 advertising channel in France

The dominance of online advertising has been predicted for some time, but it looks like it’s finally reaching it’s coming of age in France. For the first time ever, advertising via digital media has overtake the press to become the #2 advertising channel in France, as found in a recent study by PwC. According to the study, Internet advertising grew at a rate of 4% last year to reach a value of 2.89 billion Euros in France, while the advertising spend via the written press declined 8% last year. TV is still number one at 27%, but digital is not far behind at 25%. PwC is even predicting if the current trends continue, that internet could surpass TV in terms of share of ad-spend by end 2015 and most certainly will by end 2016.

Interestingly, France still lags its European neighbors in terms of digital’s share of total ad-spend, as it stands at 37% in the UK and 32% in Germany, indicating that online advertising in France still has a lot of room to grow.
Which online advertising formats proved to be the most popular in France, search/sponsored links was still strongest at 59% of the total online ad-spend and a value of 1.75 billion euros. Display was second, but growing at twice the rate of display, +8%. Criteo is undoubtedly benefiting substantially from this. Video also grew massively, albeit from a small base, at a rate of  +65% in 2014, accounting for 224 million euros in ad-sales.

 
Mobile is, obviously, also growing massively, up 77% over the previous year, hitting a total of 407 million euros. Mobile now makes up 14% of all digital advertising in France. Again there’s significant room to grow here as even in the UK, which also has room to go, mobile ad spending accounts for 22.6% of online ad-spend.

 
With companies like Criteo, Teads, and more, France has started to build an impressive name for itself in the adtech space.  However, the ad-market in France still has some work to do before, as mentioned earlier, it catches up with its German and British neighbors on digital advertising.