Where Do Companies Advertise in Austria?

Advertising is an important part of any successful business. It helps to raise awareness of the company and its products and services, attract new customers and retain existing ones. But how and where do companies advertise in Austria? Which channels are most likely to reach consumers? We have brought together information on this from various studies.

How Do Consumers in Austria Find Companies and Their Offerings?

TV advertising, search engines and recommendations from family and friends. These are the sources cited by around one-third of Internet users in Austria for discovering new companies and products. Online and offline sources alternate in the following places. The Austrian consumers named the following sources the least – just around one sixth of them ticked these boxes: Website advertising, articles in printed newspapers and magazines, and placement of companies and their offerings in TV shows and movies.

When consumers actively search for companies and brands, they do so predominantly online. Over 64% of Austrians prefer to search via search engines, mainly Google. Price comparison sites and social media follow at a large distance in second and third place.

These statements are based on a GWI survey of Internet users that is being cited in the Digital Austria 2022 Report by Datareportal. However, since over 94% of the population in Austria use the Internet, we assume that the findings from the study are representative.

In summary, we can say that for “incidental” brand discovery, traditional media – TV, radio, print, and billboards – continue to play an important role, but for targeted information gathering, online channels are ahead.

How Do Companies in Austria Use Their Advertising Budgets?

How does consumer behavior match up with advertising spending in Austria? One finds contradictory data on the amount of total advertising spending in Austria and how the budgets are distributed among the individual channels. 

According to Datareportal, which in turn cites Statista, companies in Austria spent around EUR 3.5 billion on advertising in 2022. Online advertising accounted for 42.9% of this, and the trend is rising.

But the study “Focus Werbebilanz 2022” gives other figures: According to the report, spending on above-the-line advertising channels amounted to more than EUR 4.6 billion. If we add the below-the-line channels – sponsorship and direct marketing – we arrive at a gross advertising spend of over EUR 6.5 billion, roughly distributed as follows:

• 28% for print advertising

• 21% for TV advertising

• 19% for sponsoring

• 13.5% for online advertising

• 9% for direct marketing

• 4.5% each for radio advertising and outdoor advertising

• 0.1% for cinema advertising

What the Focus study has in common with the figures quoted by Datareportal is that the trend is towards more and more online advertising.

In the following, we take a closer look at some of these advertising channels based on the subdivision of the Focus study.

Print Advertising

Printed newspapers and magazines still play a major role in Austria, even though print circulations are getting smaller and readers are spending less and less time reading press products. At the same time, publishers are trying to bring their publications to readers as ePapers. These ePapers could be seen as a medium for online advertising. However, they generally still have the characteristics of print products: once the ePaper has been composed, the content can no longer be changed. Nor can the advertising messages placed in it be adapted to the individual user behavior of the readers. They are, effectively, print products in pdf or e-book format.

The Focus study categorizes print advertising as follows:

• Daily newspapers: According to the Austrian Circulation Control (oeak.at), the largest daily newspapers in the country – along with their regional editions – are KRONE, Kleine Zeitung, Kurier and the complimentary newspapers Heute and oe24. Around 59% of print advertising budgets go to them and smaller or regional dailies.

• Regional weekly newspapers: Here, ÖAK distinguishes between Sunday or holiday newspapers (including Die Presse am Sonntag, Kleine Zeitung, KRONE and Kurier) and other weekly newspapers. The latter are predominantly church and regional newspapers with small circulations, as well as regional complimentary newspapers with a cumulative circulation of around 3.5 million copies. Just under 24% of the print advertising budget goes to this category.

• Magazines: These print products are generally published monthly or less frequently and receive a total of around 13% of the budget pie. Magazines with high circulation in Austria are the complimentary magazines Weekend Magazin, Active Beauty, Kärnten.magazin and maxima, and the paid magazines Servus in Stadt & Land, ORF Nachlese and WOMAN.

• Trade magazines: These are typically available free of charge and are often industry-specific. The magazines of the chambers of commerce have the highest circulation. Just over 4% of the advertising budget goes to this category.

As might be expected, budgets for print advertising are slowly shrinking. Only regional weeklies saw a respectable growth of 2.9% in 2022 compared to the previous year. Nevertheless, print advertising remains the most popular form of advertising in Austria. Around EUR 1.8 billion was invested in advertisements and print supplements.  

Television Advertising

Television advertising is still an important part of the advertising landscape in Austria. According to the GWI study cited by Datareportal, Austrians still watch an average of almost three hours of television every day.

The most popular public TV channels are ORF 1 and ORF 2, which held a market share of 34.6% in 2022, thanks in part to the broadcasting of the World Cup and skiing competitions. But the public broadcasters from Germany were also tuned in: ARD and ZDF accounted for 7.2% of the market, and the transnational channel 3Sat for another 1.4%.

The remaining market shares are shared by the purely Austrian private stations (ServusTV, the ATV Group and Puls4) and the German private stations. The latter either broadcast only German programs in Austria or also offer program windows with specifically Austrian content. However, the advertising blocks are consistently tailored to the Austrian market. 

According to the “Focus Werbebilanz 2022”, gross advertising expenditure for TV advertising in Austria totaled EUR 1.38 billion in 2022. Of this, 31% was attributable to the ORF broadcasting family and 69% to the private German and Austrian TV stations. Advertising expenditure thus roughly coincides with market shares. Although TV advertising spending at the public broadcasters declined, spending at the private broadcasters increased year-on-year.

Online Advertising

As already mentioned, over 94% of Austrians use the Internet. This makes online advertising a mandatory part of every company's marketing strategy, and according to a study by Statista from 2021, over 60% of Austrian companies already do this.

There are many ways to advertise online. The Focus study categorizes them as follows:

• Classic online advertising: banner ads on websites and in email newsletters. In principle, the advertising business adopted from print and adapted to online media. 36% of online advertising spend is in this area.

• Mobile: booking ad units in mobile apps. They are often seen in free mobile apps and games. 9% of online advertising budgets were spent here.

• SEA: Advertisers bid for advertising space for selected search terms in search engines. This is the second most important category, accounting for 25% of online advertising spend.

• Social: Advertising on social networks. In Austria, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Twitter, Telegram and Snapchat are of importance. Over 15% of online marketing budgets are invested here. 

• Video: This primarily includes advertising on YouTube. Austrian companies spend over 14% of their online budgets on this.

According to the Focus study, advertising spending is growing in all online categories, but most strongly on social media with growth of just under 25%. In total, companies in Austria spent around EUR 860 million on online advertising.

In its extensive presentation, Datareportal lists influencer marketing as a separate form of advertising. However, since influencers usually spread advertising messages via social media and videos, we consider it to be covered by the social and video categories in the Focus study. 

Radio Advertising

Austrians listen to the radio every day, preferably when they get up, have breakfast and on their way to work. According to the GWI study cited by Datareportal, they do this for an average of 97 minutes a day, but according to the figures from the ORF broadcasting group, for 187 minutes.

ORF radio also enjoys the largest market share nationwide, at around 60%. However, there are few radio stations that are popular, let alone broadcast, throughout the country. While many radio stations also offer a live audio stream on their websites, this is likely to be of little importance given the above situations in which radio is listened to.

Radio advertising is a relatively inexpensive way to attract attention, especially for locally or regionally based companies. The advertising budget for radio increased slightly to around EUR 293 million in 2022. Unlike television, public broadcasters are benefiting more from this trend than private radio stations.

Outdoor Advertising

The Focus study breaks down into the following advertising formats:

• Billboard: these are large-format billboards.

• Street Furniture: advertising on bus stops, trash cans, seating.

• Transportation: advertising on buses and trains.

• Ambience Media: This refers to advertising formats that are tailored to the specific environment. They range from free postcards on the bar in a pub to infoscreens on buses and trains. 

• Digital-Out-Of-Home (DOOH): It is essentially the upgrade for all the previously mentioned forms of outdoor advertising. By using moving images and video, in some cases created for just one location (for example, the huge video walls in Times Square in New York), they receive a particularly high level of attention.

In 2022, advertisers invested around 294 million euros in outdoor advertising. The lion's share of this is attributed to classic billboards. However, it is also these that have seen the biggest decline, while the other advertising formats – except for street furniture – received strong gains of around 15% to 35%.

Conclusion

There are several studies on the advertising landscape in Austria. In this article, we have mainly highlighted the Focus Werbebilanz, as a detailed comparison of the individual studies would go beyond the scope of this article. 

All studies have one thing in common: online advertising forms are strongly on the rise, but traditional advertising forms such as TV, print, and radio remain relevant. Outdoor advertising is shifting more and more from static billboard advertising to interactive forms of advertising. 

For optimum results from your advertising measures, you should not treat the advertising channels separately, but integrate them with each other. Because the analog and digital spheres are increasingly merging. P8 Marketing will be happy to help you develop an advertising strategy that delivers creative, activating campaigns to the media that are relevant to your target group.