Statistics Iceland has released an analysis of the ad market in Iceland. It shows that, in 2017, Icelandic advertisers bought advertisements in the domestic media for 14,020 ISK million (116 EUR million), a slight decrease after a continuous – but slow – growth over the last decade.
Roughly three quarters of the ad revenue in 2017 fell into the hands of only five media and telecom companies, which points at a noteworthy concentration of the Icelandic media market.
Newspapers still most important
Despite the changing division of ad revenue shares between media industries – largely at the expense of the print media – print newspapers are still the single most important advertising medium on the Icelandic market, with a 38 per cent share of the total advertising revenue. In second place is television (21 per cent), followed by radio (17 per cent) and online advertising on domestic websites (13 per cent).
The media industries’ advertising revenues in ISK millions are presented in the graph below.
Source: Statistics Iceland.
In a Nordic comparative perspective, this means that the Icelandic advertising market exhibits a number of special traits; i.e., a substantially larger share of the advertising cake falls into the hands of newspapers and radio, at the same time as online advertising is more limited, compared to its neighbouring Nordic countries.
Late development of online advertising
The weight of the web media as an advertising medium has been limited in Iceland. Since the 2010s its importance in this regard has increased slowly but surely, reaching 13 per cent of the total advertising revenue in 2017. Nearly 80 per cent of the online advertising revenue goes to media’s websites, with independents receiving just above 20 per cent.
Advertising expenditure to foreign websites is excluded in these figures. Cautious estimates from Statistics Iceland suggest that, in total, around one fourth to one fifth of Icelandic advertisers’ expenditures are on foreign websites (Google, Facebook, YouTube, etc.), which is substantially lower than in the other Nordic countries.
Eva Harrie