The Endless Agony of Audiovisual Change: Conventional Television Facing a Multimillion-Euro Loss in Advertising Investment
Conventional television in Spain is going through a critical moment, marked by a significant contraction in advertising revenues that underscores a profound shift in consumption patterns and brand strategies. Recently, the sector has faced the loss of €75 million in advertising income—a figure that goes beyond mere financial statistics to become a symptom of structural erosion.
This decline unfolds within a broader context of difficulty for the media industry as a whole, where total advertising investment had already fallen by 0.3% during the first half of the year and by an even sharper 2.15% in July and August 2025. The backdrop is an increasingly fragmented audience migrating toward digital platforms, streaming services, and on-demand content, challenging the linear business model that sustained major broadcasters for decades.
Television, once holding an almost absolute monopoly over mass attention, is now watching its convening power fragment under pressure from new narratives and interactive formats. The downturn in advertising investment on the small screen is not an isolated event, but rather the clearest manifestation of a crisis of identity and adaptation.
Advertisers, driven by the search for greater efficiency and the ability to segment audiences with unprecedented precision, are redirecting their budgets toward digital channels that offer detailed metrics and a more tangible return on investment. Platforms such as YouTube—where ads are embedded in on-demand content and enable direct interaction with audiences—have become preferred destinations for advertising spend.
This shift not only impacts broadcasters’ bottom lines, but also calls into question television’s relevance as the primary vehicle for large-scale brand building. Traditional television now faces the titanic task of justifying to agencies and clients the value of its mass reach in comparison with the surgical efficiency of online programmatic advertising.
The response of major television operators to this financial shock has been a delicate balancing act. Despite the challenges, groups such as Mediaset and Atresmedia have remained profitable in recent years, even distributing dividends to shareholders. This reflects solid financial management and notable resilience, partly grounded in revenue diversification and cost optimization.
Their main challenge now is defining how to maintain profitability in an audiovisual market that is globalizing and segmenting at breakneck speed. Competition no longer comes solely from domestic rivals, but from multinational content and technology giants operating subscription-based models with vast production capacity. The battle for viewers’ attention is now fought on multiple fronts, forcing linear television to rethink its content offering, seeking formats capable of retaining audiences without triggering unsustainable cost spirals.
Humanizing this narrative requires understanding how these changes affect the day-to-day lives of industry professionals—from advertising creatives tasked with designing multi-channel campaigns, to journalists and producers facing tighter budgets and accelerated production timelines. Behind the €75 million loss lie strategic decisions that impact thousands of jobs and the very nature of the content being produced.
Television is being forced to innovate in how it integrates advertising, searching for less intrusive formats that better align with the habits of audiences increasingly using ad blockers and showing growing intolerance for long, poorly timed commercial breaks. The key lies in transforming advertising interruptions into a value proposition—or at least into a relevant, seamlessly integrated moment within the viewing experience.
At its core, this advertising decline reflects the slow agony of the traditional model, but also the birth of a new one that has yet to be fully defined. Television is not doomed to disappear, but it is destined for deep metamorphosis. Its future depends on capitalizing on unique assets, such as its ability to produce locally relevant news content and its role in structuring society through major live events.
Nevertheless, the urgency of redefining its value proposition is undeniable. The mirror reflects an image of diminishing power, forcing broadcasters to seek alliances, experiment with their own digital platforms, and embrace personalization—an area in which they have traditionally lagged behind technological competitors. Adaptability and strategic agility will be decisive in overcoming this economic setback and ensuring a successful transition into the audiovisual future.
The future of television as we have known it over recent decades does not lie in total annihilation, but in inevitable hybridization and transformation. What is traditionally known as conventional television—the linear, scheduled broadcasting model—will cease to be the central axis of audiovisual consumption and instead become one, albeit crucial, component within a far broader and more fragmented ecosystem.
The trend does not point to a choice between linear television and streaming, but rather to convergence, where consumers no longer distinguish between the two and instead value access to the content they want, at the time and on the device of their choosing.
One of the pillars of survival for traditional television will focus on what streaming platforms have yet to replicate with the same intensity: live broadcasting and immediacy. Major events such as live sports, breaking news, award ceremonies, and political debates will remain the last stronghold of linear television, demonstrating its unique ability to bring millions of people together around a shared, synchronized experience.
The value of such content lies in the sense of community and real-time social conversation it generates—an asset that still justifies major advertising investments, even if these must now be more selective.
The television of the future inevitably passes through Connected TV (CTV), the battleground where linear and digital converge. CTV enables broadcasters to distribute content through apps, personalize advertising, and obtain detailed consumption data—capabilities unthinkable in the analog or terrestrial model.
This hybrid approach is essential to restoring the confidence of advertisers who migrated to digital platforms in search of greater efficiency and segmentation. Major television operators are being forced to become content-driven technology companies, implementing business models that combine subscription video on demand (SVOD), ad-supported video on demand (AVOD), or freemium models offering free content with ads alongside premium, ad-free options.
Personalization powered by artificial intelligence will become a key factor in audience retention. Unlike streaming platforms that already excel at individual content recommendations, conventional television must learn to leverage big data to optimize programming schedules, time slots, and—above all—advertising insertion.
Advertising will become less intrusive and far more relevant to viewers, migrating toward interactive formats with direct purchasing possibilities (live commerce), emulating the fluidity of digital content.
In summary, linear television will undergo a profound restructuring, but not disappearance. Its share of daily viewing time will shrink, especially among younger audiences who have embraced vertical video and micro-content. Its relevance will concentrate around key social moments—live events—while its business model evolves toward a multi-platform, connected, data-driven proposition that adopts the flexibility of streaming without relinquishing the strength of original productions and its role as a reference point for mass information and entertainment.
The challenge lies in managing this transition with agility, maintaining profitability while advertising investment is completely redistributed across the audiovisual ecosystem.
Source: PMK
Author: Redacción
Picture: Kevin Woblick Unsplash