Advertising markets continued to show signs of recovery in the first half of 2014, according to RTL Group, with strong results in Germany and the Benelux, but disappointing figures in France.
With the exception of France, which was estimated to be down 2.4%, all European net TV advertising markets in RTL Group’s territories were up year-on-year.
Despite the signs of recovery, the reported group revenue was down to €2,687 million (H1/2013: €2,755 million), mainly due to negative exchange rate effects, lower advertising sales in France and lower revenue from FremantleMedia and UFA Sports.
Meanwhile, RTL Group’s digital revenues continued to show dynamic growth, up 10.0% to €113 million thanks to organic growth and new acquisitions.
“Our results for the first half of 2014 show a mixed picture: once more, we’ve achieved a solid operating performance, with record results from our biggest profit centre in Germany and significantly higher EBITA from RTL Nederland. We’ve also made consistent progress in implementing our ‘broadcast – content – digital’ strategy,” said Anke Schäferkordt and Guillaume de Posch, Co-CEOs of RTL Group, in a joint statement.
“However, some factors weigh on our half-year results. The economic environment in France remains difficult for our local TV and radio operations, while FremantleMedia faces continued pressure on volumes and prices. In addition, the new advertising tax in Hungary will strongly reduce the profitability of RTL Hungary.”
At the end of July, RTL Group announced that it has signed a binding agreement to acquire a 65% majority stake in the programmatic video advertising platform SpotXchange; the investment significantly strengthens RTL Group’s global scale across the entire online video advertising market and adds new technology- and data-based competencies.
In the first half of 2014 RTL Group’s total online video views, including catch-up TV services and websites as well as BroadbandTV on Youtube amounted to 15.7 billion, up 226% year-on-year
FremantleMedia content reached 3.7 billion online video views, up 29% year-on-year. The company now runs 167 Youtube channels in 35 different territories.