Forty percent of all advertising revenue in Spain already goes to giants such as Google, Meta, Amazon, and Netflix.

The decline in advertising revenues for media outlets so far this year has once again brought the debate over how advertisers allocate their investment back to the table. At the beginning of the century, the main adversaries were large publishing groups such as Prisa, Vocento, and Unidad Editorial, which concentrated the bulk of press advertising. Later—after the 2008 crisis—the balance tipped toward the television duopoly of Atresmedia and Mediaset, which leveraged their greater effectiveness to absorb what print newspapers had lost. Now, the threat comes from major foreign platforms that dominate an ever-growing digital market with an iron grip. A true oligopoly controlled by Google, Meta, and Amazon, now joined by content distributors such as Prime, Disney+, and Netflix.

The difference, compared with previous battles, is that there is no unanimity within the sector when it comes to identifying these new adversaries. Everyone is clearly aware of who is capturing the bulk of advertising investment and how the commercial strategies of digital platforms are cannibalizing the few remaining spaces for media outlets and the traditional press. Yet few dare to criticize them openly or seek solutions. Instead, legacy media continue to underestimate the power of native digital outlets and small television channels. They believe the only way to regain ground is to target the large audiovisual groups—the Googles, YouTubes, and Instagrams of the world—which increasingly control not only the advertising market but almost the entire media value chain. An oligopoly that suffocates both old and new media alike.

The data from the first ten months of the year is highly revealing. Between January and December, the advertising market generated €4.928 billion, representing a modest growth of 0.3%, according to the latest figures from Infoadex, the industry’s widely accepted investment barometer. However, a closer look reveals important nuances.

Newspapers (print, legacy, and native digital) barely accounted for €583 million, with a decline of 0.1%, while television (including all platforms) reached €1.399 billion, a sharp drop of 5.6%. The only traditional medium to post growth was radio, with €469 million, up 9.5%.

Investment in Media

What about digital platforms? Infoadex groups them into three major categories. First, search advertising, with €780 million and growth of 1.2%. This reflects advertising revenue captured by search engines, where Google takes almost the entire share. Second, social media, with €667 million, also up 1.2%, shared among Facebook and Instagram (both owned by Meta), TikTok, and X. Finally, other websites account for €472 million, an increase of 8% between January and October. This category includes sites that are not digital extensions of television, newspapers, magazines, or radio—and it includes YouTube, which is the largest recipient within this segment.

With these figures, advertising—both digital and traditional—can be divided into four major groups. Platforms now take 39% of the entire advertising pie, one percentage point more than a year ago. Television follows with 12.4% of the total, down 1.7 points; newspapers with 11.8%, down one tenth of a point; and radio with 9.5%, up three tenths.

The biggest casualty of the advance of these digital giants over the past year has been television, which has also seen the steepest decline. But there has also been a shift of investment away from the press toward internet sites that have nothing to do with journalism. In other words, there is an exodus of advertisers toward environments where information traceability is lost and where fertile ground exists for fake news and the creation of hoaxes.

This is the first major conclusion to be drawn from the data. Advertisers are not only moving away from traditional media, but also from informational environments altogether. This is not just about the proliferation of pseudo-information—and pseudo-journalists—on social media, but also about the massive flow of advertising investment toward portals and websites on the fringes of journalism.

This is a highly dangerous trend: not only has the monopoly over narrative and news agendas been lost, but advertisers have also come to believe they can achieve greater returns in less credible environments. Many have replaced their perception of the traditional, reliable prescriber with figures or websites that they believe have greater social impact, particularly among younger audiences. This new landscape is being driven by media agency planning and programmatic advertising, which distributes ads algorithmically with minimal content filtering.

Digital Platforms

This leads to the second major issue: regulatory asymmetry. A striking example illustrates this clearly. One of the most talked-about reality shows is the second season of The House of the Twins, a program featuring extreme cohabitation, high levels of violence, and a lack of oversight that would not be tolerated on traditional television and would likely trigger advertiser boycotts or a wave of fines from Spain’s National Commission on Markets and Competition (CNMC).

“But because it’s broadcast on YouTube, they can do whatever they want,” says a senior executive at a traditional television network. One of the sector’s long-standing—and largely ignored—demands has been the regulation of content, particularly to protect minors, and of the way brands are advertised on platforms such as YouTube, Amazon, Instagram, and TikTok.

So far, regulatory action has been minimal—or nonexistent. A clear example of inaction, or missed legislative opportunity, was the influencer law presented this year. It sought to impose the same restrictions and obligations faced by media outlets on influencers earning more than €300,000 annually and with over one million followers. The industry believes these thresholds will exclude the vast majority of content creators. Moreover, the law reinforces the digital platforms’ argument that they are merely “intermediaries” and bear no responsibility for the content they distribute—even though they profit from advertising space.

This means advertisers invest in environments with virtually no limitations on their ads, unlike the press, radio, and traditional television, which operate in highly regulated settings with strict constraints on programming, opinions, and information.

Government Action

A third area of concern involves the metrics used by these major platforms. The only consumption data available is what the platforms themselves generate: video views on YouTube, impressions on Instagram, retweets on X. There is no standardized measurement, unlike the requirements imposed on media outlets: GfK for digital press, Kantar Media for television, and the EGM for radio.

In fact, when proposals have been made to establish a global, cross-platform measurement system, the platforms have flatly refused to explore any option. We only know what they choose to tell us—particularly problematic in the case of viewership data for programs and films on Netflix, Disney+, and HBO Max. We do not even know exactly how many subscribers they have, because—unlike telecom operators’ television services—they are not required to regularly disclose user numbers.

This situation is especially perverse given that these platforms compete in the same advertising market as media outlets that are audited to an extreme degree and are now being required to register detailed information about ownership, shareholders, and sources of funding. Meanwhile, most major platforms bill their Spanish revenues through companies based abroad and, in none of the cases, effectively declare their real turnover in Spain.

This growing asymmetry continues to favor companies that year after year push media outlets to the margins of the advertising market—advertising that represents the main source of income for radio and television, and an increasingly vital one for the press amid the failure of digital subscription models.

So, what is being done? For now, there is movement—but very slowly. Less than three weeks ago, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez promised an investigation into Meta (Instagram and Facebook) for an alleged violation of the privacy of millions of users, and even indicated that executives would be summoned to appear before Parliament.

However, this move comes after eight years in which Sánchez has been one of the European leaders most accommodating to these companies, legislating in their favor and ignoring the telecommunications and television sectors, which have repeatedly called for a level regulatory playing field. In other words, the sector has little confidence in what the government can—or is willing to—do to regulate big tech.

Meanwhile, by 2026, these platforms could grow dangerously enough to capture half of the entire advertising pie.

Source: THEOBJECTIVE
Author: Fernando Cano