Review of Media Ad Spend in Ireland

While the UK advertising industry is facing probably the worst market conditions for years, the Irish market is thought to have remained buoyant. Marketing Week has recently published a review of advertising and print media in the Republic, making for interesting reading.

The country is of course relatively small. In comparison to the UK, the population of the Republic is just 3.6 million versus the UK's 58 million. Moreover, the newspaper sector is dominated by Irish versions of UK titles and the magazine market is controlled by UK titles.

It is in terms of the print media that bucking of the UK downward trend is most obvious. The signs of strength in Irish media spend are clear in the strong growth rates that have been reported in recent years. Arguably this is partly a direct consequence of the health of the wider economy. The Irish gross domestic product (GDP) rose by nine per cent a year in the late Nineties and employment levels have risen steadily.

Growth has been somewhat stunted more recently however. Some of the hi-tech industries Ireland attracted during the Nineties have now been hit by the crisis in the dot-com sector. To a degree this has had a knock-on effect elsewhere, including in advertising. "Things such as lay-offs and unemployment, which Ireland had forgotten over the past five years, have started to happen," a spokesperson from the Irish print association PPAI has noted. "But at the same time, I don't think there are going to be any great dives in our sector. We are still predicting growth, although it will be slower than originally thought."

The PPAI has been running a "Magazines Mean Business" campaign in Ireland. As part of this campaign, an emphasis has been placed on the value of independent circulation auditing. This could be ABC auditing but there is also the option of setting up an alternative auditing tool. This would possibly span both newspapers and magazines and would be more appropriate for the Irish market.

One of the big growth areas in Ireland, as elsewhere, is celebrity magazines. This is a sector where Irish publishers are taking on their UK competitors. Realising that a publication slanted towards the Irish market will sell better than one that is not, Hello! has begun to produce a separate Irish cover. Sales are said to have risen as a result.

All articles 2006-22 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas unless otherwise stated.