Spot TV: Hearty gains during third quarter

Political ad spending was huge during third quarter of last year, as expected.

But in a good sign for spot television’s longer-term outlook, political wasn’t the only category driving the medium’s big gains. Key advertisers such as automotive, communications/telecommunications, and food stores and supermarkets also saw strong gains.

Spending was up 18.8 percent during third quarter of 2012, according to new data from the TVB, from $4.06 billion to $4.82 billion.

Four of the top five categories saw at least double-digit percentage year-over-year growth.

Automotive (up 27 percent) was, as usual, the top category with $925.3 million, followed by communications/telecommunications (up 16.1 percent) at $420.3.

Political, the No. 3 overall category, saw the biggest gains, rising 917.5 percent over 2011, an off election year, to $338.5 million.

And No. 5 car and truck dealers jumped 23.3 percent, to $273.3 million.

The big gains for political during the July to September period were unsurprising.

Forecasters predicted that nearly $3 billion would be spent on local television during the election, a new record, and though most of it came during October, spending began to spike in late August, as the Republican and Democratic conventions wrapped up.

Interestingly, Obama for President outspent Romney for President by a wide margin, $94 million to $54.3 million, during the quarter.

But while political money is a nice boon for stations, it does not reflect the health of the economy. In that regard, third quarter brought some good news.

Even without the $338.5 million in political spending, spot TV would have risen 10 percent. Though some of that can be attributed to price inflation because of the high demand for spot with political eating up so much inventory, it’s still a good sign for the medium.

Auto had a great quarter. Spending gains were divided equally among domestic and foreign companies, with Nissan (up 47.8 percent) and General Motors (up 55.9 percent) seeing the biggest gains.

Foreign and domestic dealer associations also spent heavily, with Ford up 27.9 percent and Toyota up 51.8 percent.

The foreign gains came against admittedly soft comparisons to the same time in 2011. The earthquake and tsunami in Japan in March of that year led to inventory shortages for many American dealers because the Japanese plants were shut down by natural disaster damage.

Japanese manufacturers and dealers thus cut back on advertising because they did not have the cars to sell.

Communications/telecom’s third-quarter rise was also encouraging. From January to September of last year spending was actually down 2.7 percent in the category, and third quarter marked its first significant gains of the year, signaling a possible rebound.

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