Russia's advertizing market to shrink 16.5% in 2015 - ZenithOptimedia forecast
MOSCOW. March 30 (Interfax) - Russia's advertizing market will shrink 16.5% in 2015, the ZenithOptimedia agency, part of the Publicis Groupe holding, said in a forecast.
The advertizing market expanded by 4.3% in 2014, the first time since 2009 that growth was less than 10%, ZenithOptimedia said. The market suffered from U.S. and EU sanctions and from an outflow of foreign investment. These problems were aggravated by the steep decline in the oil prices and the ruble devaluation.
Russia's economic problems also had an impact on its leading trading partner, Belarus, where spending on advertizing is forecast to decline 33.5% in 2015. In Ukraine, the contraction will amount to 62.3%.
Foreign advertisers will scale back their presence on these markets and local companies will have to slash their budgets in order to minimize losses, ZenithOptimedia said. The three countries account for 2.1% of global spending on advertizing: their declines will slow but not halt global growth in advertizing this year.
The global advertizing market is forecast to grow 4.4% to $544 billion in 2015 and 5.3% in 2016, due to the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro and the presidential elections in the U.S., ZenithOptimedia said.