Changes

„Changes of the printing sector in the age of technologies“

The printing sector has long been prophesied grim prospects. Constantly evolving new technologies add to fundamentally stir up the foundations of a traditional printing industry. However, what is the situation today?

Certainly, we should not give a blind eye to the significant impact of new technologies because the printing industry had to adapt to the rapidly changing situation. Inventions such as electronic book readers were welcomed with great enthusiasm, as a tool destined to substantially modify the process of reading and its perception. Along with the economic crisis affecting nearly all industries, the development of technologies for some has become a bite bigger than one could chew.

However, we can see positive changes in the printing sector in the major global economies recovering after the crisis. For example, budgets for printed advertising in Germany have been rising for the third year. This is shown by the survey performed by the Nielsen marketing company. This on this information, about 10.5 billion euro was invested in printed advertising in Germany in 2016 – showing the growth of 2.6% compared to the last year. Since 2013, these figures had risen by nearly 400 million euro.

The printing sector has long been prophesied grim prospects. Constantly evolving new technologies add to fundamentally stir up the foundations of a traditional printing industry. However, what is the situation today?

More optimistic results are noted in Germany in many other printing-related areas: newspaper publishing (4.9 billion euro spent on print advertising, + 4% compared to 2015), external advertising (1.8 billion, + 7.9%), magazine publishing (0.4 billion, + 1.7% ). Strong growth was recorded on all of these areas. According to statistics, the reduction of 1.8% was noted only in the public sector segment. After the low result of 2013, the recovery of printed advertising has started, and the growth was already notable in the last year. On the other hand, advertising costs on the Internet fell by 4.2%. One may say that new trends are setting up – abundance of advertising on the Internet, and the growing use of adblock software forces to return to traditional, tested tools.

According to the studio performed by the same agency in the United States of America, 51% of the respondents were reading the news only in the press. The remaining respondents were choosing Internet news platforms in addition to printed newspapers. Only 5% of respondents read news exclusively from online sources. 

As we have mentioned, it is obvious that the printing industry is not standing still, and looks for the waste to adapt to the speedy dictated by the latest technologies. A good example is the growing popularity of web-to-print services. Naturally, clients will do not imagine their life without technologies are happy to order simple printed products over the Internet, getting them delivered straight to the home. Therefore, the demand for such printing services is constantly growing. Conditions to develop these technologies in Lithuania are highly favourable because of the very active and well developed IT field. 

In summary, we can say that the printing sector has successfully adapted to the changes and in the future we will face a lot of projects and challenges , accepting them as yet another development opportunity.