https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/15/ad-market-worse-now-than-during-pandemic-lows-david-zaslav-says.html

The promoting market is at the moment weaker than at any level through the coronavirus pandemic slowdown of 2020, Warner Bros. Discovery Chief Govt David Zaslav stated at an funding convention Tuesday. If the advert market doesn’t enhance subsequent 12 months, “it’s going to be laborious” to hit the corporate’s $12 billion earnings forecast for 2023, Zaslav stated at RBC’s World TIMT Convention in New York. Zaslav’s feedback sign a change in rhetoric from giant conventional media executives who usually stated this summer season that promoting slumps weren’t vital for them at the same time as digital media gamers noticed a pullback. Advertisers have diminished spending because the Federal Reserve has raised rates of interest to chill inflation, pressuring equities together with media corporations’.

Issues received “rather a lot worse” through the previous few months, Zaslav stated. Warner Bros. Discovery has had its valuation minimize in half this 12 months. Different corporations reliant on promoting, resembling Snap, Meta and BuzzFeed, have all fallen greater than 65% this 12 months. Merging Discovery with WarnerMedia earlier this 12 months has introduced a sequence of unexpected challenges as a result of some property have been “unexpectedly worse than we thought,” Zaslav stated. HBO went from making greater than $2 billion in 2019 to shedding about $3 billion final 12 months as content material spending surged, in keeping with Zaslav. The CEO has modified course for HBO Max because it will get set to merge with Discovery+ subsequent 12 months, together with eliminating low-rated reveals and greater funds motion pictures made just for the streaming service.