Interest in online advertising has overtaken TV advertising, a new survey shows.

Exposure to offline advertising is decreasing while exposure to online advertising is increasing, according to the Misco Social Media Usage Trends survey, held in association with the  Ornate Group.

A total of 66% of respondents stated that they are exposed to offline advertising, down from 86% in 2018, while 91% stated that they are exposed to online advertising, up from 80% in 2018.

Respondents were asked where they prefer to watch/hear/read advertisements. The result shows that social media has overtaken television as the preferred medium.

While there was a spike in 2021 for both media, the longer-term trend shows a slight decline for television and a slight increase for social media, to the point that 38% prefer to watch/hear/read advertisements on social media and 34% prefer television. Radio comes third.

There was an evident decline in magazines and an increase for e-mail. Overall, 54% prefered to watch/hear/read advertisements on online media compared to 45% in 2018, while 63% prefer offline media, compared to 73% in 2018.

Andrew Zammit-Manduca, founder of the Ornate Group, said “online marketing has now become mainstream marketing alongside with offline marketing, and these results confirm this trend. Businesses, therefore, need to devote the appropriate resources to ensure a good return on investment from their marketing expenditure”.

Online shopping

A total of 76% of respondents stated that they shop online. This was a slight increase over 2021 but was lower than in 2020. Looking at longer-term trends, the 2022 data showed an increase in online shoppers for clothing footwear and accessories, grocery products, make-up, beauty care products, healthcare products, and personal care products, car insurance and home appliances.

The purchase of airline tickets and hotel stays had not yet recovered from the restrictions related to COVID. 

Passive consumers of social media

The survey also confirmed the view that emerged in previous waves that the Maltese are passive consumers of social media. A total of 61% respondents to the survey just look at other persons’ content and comments, without doing further action such as sharing content or creating new content.

Only 11% create new material and content on social media and 45% share contents and comments they come across.  

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