https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/15/ad-market-worse-now-than-during-pandemic-lows-david-zaslav-says.html
The promoting market is at present weaker than at any level in the course of the coronavirus pandemic slowdown of 2020, Warner Bros. Discovery Chief Govt David Zaslav mentioned at an funding convention Tuesday. If the advert market doesn’t enhance subsequent yr, “it’s going to be onerous” to hit the corporate’s $12 billion earnings forecast for 2023, Zaslav mentioned at RBC’s International TIMT Convention in New York. Zaslav’s feedback sign a change in rhetoric from massive conventional media executives who typically mentioned this summer time that promoting slumps weren’t important for them at the same time as digital media gamers noticed a pullback. Advertisers have lowered spending because the Federal Reserve has raised rates of interest to chill inflation, pressuring equities together with media firms’.
Issues bought “loads worse” in the course of the previous few months, Zaslav mentioned. Warner Bros. Discovery has had its valuation minimize in half this yr. Different firms reliant on promoting, resembling Snap, Meta and BuzzFeed, have all fallen greater than 65% this yr. Merging Discovery with WarnerMedia earlier this yr has introduced a sequence of unexpected challenges as a result of some belongings had been “unexpectedly worse than we thought,” Zaslav mentioned. HBO went from making greater than $2 billion in 2019 to dropping about $3 billion final yr as content material spending surged, in line with Zaslav. The CEO has modified course for HBO Max because it will get set to merge with Discovery+ subsequent yr, together with eliminating low-rated exhibits and greater funds films made just for the streaming service.
