In Outlook: Australian Entertainment and Media 2017 the company says Australian ad revenue overall for all sectors will only increase by 2.7 per cent CAGR.

Within that however the print and publishing sector will be punished, with PwC forecasting newspaper ad revenue seeing a CAGR for the next five years of minus 7.5 per cent, and magazines having a negative CAGR in that period of 2.7 per cent.

Those figures are aggregated,  for newspapers print advertising revenue is forecast to fall by 11 per cent CAGR, while digital revenue will rise by six per cent CAGR. PwC estimates that by 2017 newspaper revenue for print will by $1.02bn while digital revenue for newspaper will still be less than half that at $489m.

The one bright spot for print advertising continues to be outdoor, which PwC forecasts will achieve a 3.8 per cent CAGR until 2017.

PwC predicts that the next two years will see magazine ad revenue decline, before an upturn in 2017 itself. It says that by then magazine ad revenue will be $474m, compared with the $750m it reached in 2008.

Internet advertising will become the number one medium in 2013 according to PwC, with revenue predicted to top $3.5bn, overtaking free-to-air TV at $3.3bn.

However PwC’s executive director for Media and Entertainment Megan Brownlow is quoted in the AFR as saying much of the measurement for the success of internet advertising is ‘ridiculous’, in the AFR she says, “I have sympathy for the magazine argument. It’s hard when you are up against a digital world that is completely subsumed by click through rates, which is such an incomplete measure of success. It is ridiculous in so many ways.”

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