Abstract

The role of advertising in the relationship between enterprises and market and the links between the advertising investment flow and the economic cycle - represented by the Gross Domestic Product - are two very relevant issues which affect the media industry. On both sides, rules have neither been clearly defined in the past nor have been studied by economic theory. Furthermore, during the last decades the advertising investment flow in the media sector has been influenced significantly in different countries more by social and political events rather than by economic issues. Nowadays, advertising - pressed between the industry choices and the consumers' behaviour - has to cope, especially in the developed countries, with a new scenario, where traditional media industries are vulnerable to changes due to the increasing time dedicated to new media by a growing number of individuals.