Although alcohol ad spending saw a comparatively steep drop last year, spending by alcohol brands is expected to start recovering this year, with a report [download page] from Zenith showing that, by 2023, it will exceed what it was prior to the pandemic.
Looking at alcohol ad spend across 12 global markets, Zenith’s data shows that in 2020, ad spend from alcohol brands decreased 11.6% year-over-year (y-o-y) to $6.7 billion. This is compared to the 6.4% y-o-y decrease in ad spend across all advertisers.
This year, alcohol ad spend is expected to grow by 5.3% y-o-y to reach $7 billion, and by 2023, alcohol advertising spend is estimated to reach $7.7 billion, surpassing the $7.6 billion spent on advertising in 2019.
While global advertisers are investing a great deal of their spend in digital, alcohol advertisers continue to hold true to more traditional forms of advertising. In 2020, close to half (49.2%) of alcohol ad spend went towards TV, about double the 24.3% share of total advertising spend invested in the medium. And, while out-of-home (OOH) advertising had a rough year, alcohol advertisers dedicated a far above-average share of their budgets to OOH (18.6% vs. 5.1% for total advertisers).
Insofar as digital is concerned, only 24.2% of ad spend from alcohol advertisers went to the medium in 2020. This is compared to the 56.2% that advertisers as a whole in the 12 markets analyzed allocated to digital.
That said, alcohol advertisers are starting to see the benefits of advertising online. Zenith expects alcohol digital advertising to see an annual growth rate of 9.2% between 2019 and 2023. And, by 2023, it is estimated that digital will account for 30% of alcohol advertising spend.
The full report can be found here.
About the Data: Findings are based on analysis of 12 markets (Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Russia, Spain, Switzerland, the UK and the US) which combine to account for 73% of total global ad spend.