KEY HEADLINES OF THE LAST WEEK’S NEWS FROM THE RUSSIAN ADVERTISING MARKET

KEY HEADLINES OF THE LAST WEEK’S NEWS FROM THE RUSSIAN ADVERTISING MARKET

Sources: wciom.ru; grayling.com

·         The new project of the Russian parliament: total ad ban of alcohol and tobacco advertising since 2013. Prime minister D.Medvedev also wants to ban smoking in public places. Russian ad market may lose up to 2 bln. Rub (approx.$65 mln), which is less than 1% of the total market volume. Currently those categories can only use print, indoor and satellite TV. This is why print will suffer the most – about 5% of the print advertising market (in some magazines much higher) is tobacco and alcohol advertising. Print segment demonstrates the lowest growth rate (slightly above 0%) in 2012 compared to other media in Russia. This makes the life of many titles even harder – the risks that some of them may be closed in 2013 are becoming much higher if the new law is going to be approved.

·         30% of the Russian and Central European companies ignore social media. This is higher than global average 22% and much higher than in the USA (15%). The recent study was made by Grayling, a global PR agency. Only 39% of those companies, which use social media, fully integrated it into their communications strategy; about 50% did it partly. The Technology, Media & Telecommunications sector leads the way in social media with 83 per cent having a digital strategy compared to just 60 per cent in the Transport, Automotive & Logistics sector and 68 per cent in the Consumer & Retail sector . The two most common objectives for a company’s digital strategy are ‘improved reputation’ (21.4%) and ‘awareness’ (22.1%). ‘Increase in sales’ was reported as a driver by 11% of respondents and ‘customer service’ by just 10%. The study does not say whether the companies evaluated how successfully their social media strategy worked for their business

·         Only 6% of the Russian population says that they trust advertising, 61% claim that they do not trust it at all – the latest study of the Russia Public Opinion Research Center . 31% say that they partly trust it. The highest share (12%) of those who do trust advertising is among the group with the highest income. 43% of respondents said that the switch their TV sets to another channel immediately after they see that a TV advertising block starts. 32% say that they do not watch TV advertising but neither they switch to other TV channels: instead they use this break for doing other things. Only 9% say that they watch TV advertising. 7% say that they turn of the sound but do not switch. The study was run on 13-14 October, 2012 in 138 cities and towns within 46 regions of Russia. The total number of respondents was 1600.