Paolo Duranti

The present study has the object of describing the principal structural features and most evident dynamics of the Italian advertising market and to embed it in the broadest international context. A market growing strongly worldwide and moderately in Europe; television almost everywhere dominant, with the exception of the principal European countries (excluding Italy), and increasingly governed by the striking technological developments that are multiplying the channels available, suggesting new ways of using the media and offering innovative techniques of communication. Colour and format for newspapers, multiplexes for cinemas, digital for radio and big formats for the billboards are the main lines of development in supply. Automobiles, Telecommunications, Finance and Services in general tend mostly to sustain market growth, in contrast with a consumer goods sector that is stagnating (also in consumption), so confirming a progressive expansion of the service sector in consumption itself. Technology, on the one hand, and the need for more direct interaction, closer to the user of the media, underlie the growth in forms of ‘non-classic’ communication (events, sports sponsorships, direct mailing etc.), which have proved extremely dynamic and have now attained dimensions similar to those of traditional media.