The recession has wiped in excess of £1.3bn from revenues in the UK business to business sector since 2007, a senior PriceWaterhouseCoopers partner told figures from the magazine industry today.
Despite some signs of revenues returning to the battered B2B sector, Nick George, media partner with PWC, told delegates at the PPA Conference that recovery would be slow.
The sector as a whole – which includes trade magazines, business information services, directories and professional book publishing – declined by around 11 per cent last year as ad revenue fell by more than 20 per cent, George said.
The result of the declines would be a difficult 2010, he added, with positive growth unlikely to return until next year or even 2012.
‘By no means are we out of the woods,’he told delegates today.
George said that PWC analysts had concluded that recession in the sector was not solely the result of cyclical factors.
He told delegates that 40 per cent of the downturn last year was the result of structural declines that would exist beyond the downturn.
As a result of these structural declines the development of digital revenues would be the main engine of the eventual recovery, he added.
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