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Published: 23 November 2018

Small growth in the mass media market - households now spend on video on-demand services

The value of the mass media market was about EUR 3.8 billion in 2017. Compared to the year before, the value of the market grew by 1.4 per cent or EUR 53 million. The data are based on the calculations of Statistics Finland's mass media and cultural statistics.

Mass media market 2016 - 2017, EUR million

	2016	2017	2017	Change
	EUR mill.	EUR mill.	%	2016-17, %
Daily newspapers (7-4 times a week) 1)	807	785	20.7	-2.8
Other newspapers 1)	135	136	3.6	0.4
Free-distribution papers 1)	68	68	1.8	0.7
Magazines and periodicals 1)	490	470	12.4	-4.1
Books 1) 3)	527	549	14.5	4.2
Publishing, total	2 027	2 008	52.9	-0.9
Television 2)	1 110	1 134	29.9	2.2
Radio	64	67	1.8	4.1
Internet advertising	324	370	9.8	14.2
Electronic media, total	1 499	1 572	41.4	4.9
Audio recordings 1)	59	64	1.7	8.5
Videos (dvd, blu-ray)	61	46	1.2	-24.9
Cinemas	96	105	2.8	9.4
Recorded media, total	217	216	5.7	-0.6
All total	3 742	3 795	100.0	1.4
Source: Statistics Finland, Mass media and cultural statistics

1) Digital sales included.
2) Includes all of Yle public service (tv, radio, web-service).
3) Due to a change in compilation of statistics, the results in 2017 are not totally comparable with previous results.

Publishing (incl. newspapers, free-distribution papers, periodicals and books) is still clearly the biggest sector by its volume in the Finnish media market. However, the sales of daily newspapers and periodicals continued their nearly decade-long fall in 2017, which pressed down the entire publishing. In turn, book sales have grown in the past few years, although due to renewals in statistics compilation the latest data cannot be fully compared with the previous years' figures. Statistics Finland's calculation is based on the data of the Booksellers Association of Finland and the Finnish Book Publishers Association.

In 2017, television was the biggest individual media activity with its volume of good EUR 1.1 billion. The television industry here includes the entire activity of the Finnish Broadcasting Company, television advertising in commercial television and subscription fees to television services, which are cable TV basic fees and pay TV fees (incl. video on-demand services such as Netflix).

In 2017, the television industry grew boosted by pay TV by good two per cent from the previous year. According to the data collected by Finnpanel, an ever growing share of households follows video on-demand services. Various pay TV fees form an increasingly bigger part of households’ media consumption expenditure. This appears from Statistics Finland's Household Budget Survey published this year. In contrast, the amount and share of television advertising in television revenues continued declining.

Internet advertising grew by over 14 per cent from the previous year and was around EUR 370 million in 2017.

The year 2017 was also favourable for the audio media: audio recordings are estimated to have grown by good eight per cent and commercial radio by good four per cent from the previous year. The audio market is now boosted by digital sales, which according to IFPI Finland’s data, already covered 83 per cent of Finnish recording sales in 2017. Radio advertising has, in turn, grown fairly steadily for several years.

The year 2017 also brought clear growth to cinemas compared to the previous year. Cinema ticket sales and cinema advertising grew in total by good nine per cent. According to the Finnish Film Foundation’s data, 8.8 million visits were made to cinemas in Finland last year. Domestic films gathered 2.4 million viewers (27 per cent of all cinema visits); by far the most the film Unknown Soldier that was re-filmed in 2017.

According to the European Audiovisual Observatory, the video recording market contracted by around 25 per cent from the previous year. The data include selling of DVD and Blu-ray discs and renting of Blu-ray films but renting data of DVD films are missing from the calculation this time.

Despite the small growth recorded now, the size of the mass media market has decreased further relative to the entire national economy. In 2017, the share of mass media in GDP was 1.7 per cent, while it was 2.1 per cent ten years earlier. From 2007, the mass media market has contracted by 3.6 per cent and the contraction has been quite drastic particularly in videos, audio recordings and publishing.

Changes in the mass media market in 2007 to 2017, %

The calculations presented here describe the mass media market at end user level: for example, the figure on the newspaper market is comprised of retail priced subscription and single copy sales of newspapers, and their revenue from advertising. The figures cover domestic production and imports but not exports. There is some overlap between Internet advertising and other media groups.

Source: Mass media and cultural statistics. Statistics Finland

Inquiries: Kaisa Saarenmaa 029 551 3517, joukkoviestimet.tilastokeskus@stat.fi

Director in charge: Jari Tarkoma

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Appendix tables

• Appendix table 1. Sector shares of the mass media market 2000 - 2017, per cent (23.11.2018)
• Appendix table 2. Breakdown of newspaper sales 2000 - 2017, per cent (23.11.2018)
• Appendix table 3. Breakdown of magazine sales 2000 - 2017, per cent by (23.11.2018)
• Appendix table 4. Radio advertising 2000 - 2017, per cent (23.11.2018)
• Appendix table 5. Television (terrestrial + cable + satellite) revenue 2000 - 2017, per cent (23.11.2018)

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Updated 23.11.2018