Kantar: A less-heinous
Q4, advertising wise
Other shorts: FCC: We'll revolutionize the mediascape
By Louisa Ada Seltzer
Mar 17, 2010
Kantar: A less-heinous Q4, advertising wise
Anyone hoping for a speedier recovery for the ad economy had to be cheered by the many reports that ad spending picked up in the fourth quarter of 2009.
In fact, as it turns out, fourth quarter was much stronger, according to a report out this morning from Kantar Media, formerly TNS Media Intelligence, on full-year 2009 ad spending.
While 2009 was truly a disaster for media sellers—spending fell 12.3 percent to $125.3 billion—fourth quarter was down only 6 percent from the year-earlier period, with television getting the biggest boost.
Big spenders in those last few months were telecom, pharmaceuticals and department stores, according to Jon Swallen, senior vice president of research at Kantar.
Among the various media tracked by Kantar, television fared the best through the year, falling 9.5 percent for the 12 months but by just 2.4 percent in the final quarter. And during those months, both network TV and cable were in positive territory, up 4.1 percent and 2.7 percent.
Within the TV category, spot TV took the worst beating, down 23.7 percent for the year and 13.9 percent for the fourth quarter.
Consumer magazines saw another awful year and only a slightly improved fourth quarter, off 16.6 percent for the full 12 months and 11.1 percent for the final three.
Newspapers fared even worse for the year but somewhat better in the final months, down 19.7 percent and 8.9 percent, respectively.
Automotive was the top ad category but also the most suffering. Spending fell 23.4 percent for the year. Telecom was up modestly, 1.6 percent. Also up were pharmaceuticals, 3.9 percent, and food and candy, up 3.5 percent.
The top 10 categories as a group were off 10.7 percent.
FCC broadband plan: We'll revolutionize the mediascape
Americans are passionate adopters of new technologies, from internet TV to sophisticated wireless gizmos that can do everything short of the laundry, but the infrastructure to deliver these services is woefully stuck in the pre-internet age, back when TV was king, or so thinks the Federal Communications Commission, among others. Now the FCC has a bold new plan to update that infrastructure, and it's called the National Broadband Plan. Released yesterday, after much anticipation, the plan calls for reclaiming unused airwaves now in the hands of television broadcasters and auctioning them off to finance the building of a new infrastructure that would improve the quality and speed of internet and wireless services while making them more affordable. Among the ideas put forward by the FCC: a free wireless broadband network spanning the country and internet access that's many times faster than what's now available for most Americans, and at low cost. In this new mediascape as envisioned by the FCC, more and more Americans would be watching TV online, taking advantage of technologies that would deliver content from the internet and traditional TV channels into one single viewing device. But while the FCC's plan has lofty goals, and even a plan for paying for the new infrastructure, its prospects don't look all that encouraging. In building a new infrastructure, the FCC’s plan would be tearing down the old, and very powerful interests. Television and cable companies, to name two, are already lining up against the plan and its many proposals.
Forecast: This is the year mobile ads take off (for real)
We’ve heard it before, and this year we're apparently going to hear it again: This will finally be the big breakout year for mobile advertising. Client mobile advertising budgets are expected to grow 82 percent this year from an average of $143,000 last year to $260,000 this year, according agency respondents to a survey from digital marketing site DM2PRO.com and mobile ad network Mojiva. Their plans don't quite match up to their estimates; when agency respondents were asked to estimate a specific percentage by which client spending would increase, the average answer was 65 percent. Looking at it from a different angle, 23 percent of brand managers expect mobile ad budgets to increase between 10 and 20 percent this year, although 10 percent said mobile budgets would likely decrease. But this year should see a good amount of new dollars in mobile marketing, according to the survey. Twenty percent of non-mobile marketers predict they will spend more than 10 percent of their total 2010 marketing budgets on mobile. Of course it's important to keep in mind who did the study: Mojiva has a vested interest in greater mobile ad budgets.
ABC relaxes guidelines on replica digital editions
The print industry is in a frenzy over how to successfully translate publications onto e-readers and other digital editions, but the Audit Bureau of Circulations has made a decision that should soothe the industry. The group is easing restrictions on which electronic editions count toward circulation numbers. The old bylaws said that only identical replicas of the print edition, right down to the layout, could be counted toward circulation. The new bylaw states that while e-editions must have the same editorial content, they do not need to look the same to be counted. The decision comes as magazines and newspapers scramble to make their publications available for the soon-to-be-released Apple iPad, which is expected to at least mainstream the e-reader and at most, if you believe the hyperbole, save the print industry. ABC said yesterday that Wired magazine became the first to seek a review of its iPad edition, which has been okayed as a digital replica. ABC okayed an earlier iPhone and iPod Touch edition of GQ as well.
Nielsen: Oscars viewing was a social affair
Who needs TV viewing parties? People still like to dish with friends while watching big events such as the Oscars, but more people are now doing it online instead of in person. The Academy Awards were watched by 29.1 percent of the U.S. population earlier this month, according to Nielsen, and 13.3 percent of those viewers watched while going online. That’s an increase from last year’s Oscars, when 25.6 percent of the population watched and just 8.7 percent of those viewers did so while surfing the web. During this year’s ceremony, the top site among simultaneous viewers-surfers was Facebook, with 39.5 percent hitting the site for an average of 15.7 minutes, likely meaning they were commenting on the awards show online with friends. And if they weren’t talking to friends, they were likely doing some sort of search: Google (39.5 percent), Yahoo (31.0 percent), MSN (10.7 percent) and AOL (10.0 percent) rounded out the top five sites among simultaneous visitors during the Academy Awards. But users spent much less time on those sites than Facebook; simultaneous visitors spent an average of just 3.0 minutes on Google, 5.8 minutes on Yahoo, 1.9 minutes on MSN and 3.0 minutes on AOL.
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