Yes, it was a strong third quarter indeed

There is yet more evidence that the media economy is on a sharp upward turn during the second half of the year.

Kantar Media reports today that third-quarter ad spending rose 7.1 percent, to $35.4 billion.

That brings 2012’s three-quarter growth rate to a solid 3.8 percent, following a slow start to the year.

Olympics and political were, as expected, the main driver of the gains. But there were signs of strength beyond that, an encouraging sign as the media economy enters a non-Olympic, non-political year.

“Looking beyond these special events and focusing on indicators of core health, our data show that more than 60 percent of the top 1,000 advertisers increased their budgets year-over-year,” says Jon Swallen, chief research officer at Kantar Media North America.

“This proportion has been stable for several quarters and indicates marketers are holding the course.”

TV was, of course, the major beneficiary of the Olympic and political spending. Network TV revenue soared by 29.9 percent over last summer, the biggest jump for any medium.

Some $1 billion of that was from Olympic spending on NBC.

Spot TV also jumped, up 19.8 percent, largely due to political spending.

Total TV spending was up 15.3 percent during third quarter, which helped balanced out slides for three other major media.

Print continued to see declines. Magazine spending was off 2.9 percent in the quarter and is down 3 percent for the year.

Local magazines (up 3.5 percent during third quarter) and Spanish-language magazines (up a torrid 20.8 percent) were the only sub-segments to see gains.

Spanish-language media generally is hot, with TV seeing a 17.8 percent bump during the quarter. Hispanic newspapers were also the only subsegment of the category to see any notable third quarter growth, up 5.2 percent.

Newspapers as a whole were down 1.5 percent during the quarter, including a 17.2 percent decline for national newspapers.

Local newspapers were up 0.8 percent, but Kantar notes this was “solely due to having an extra Sunday in the reporting quarter. Without this bonus, expenditures would have dropped by roughly 3 percent, which is in line with recent quarterly results.”

A third, and less expected, category also saw declines. Internet ad spending was off 4.3 percent, but that includes only display advertising, not video or mobile ads, which have seen some of the biggest gains lately.

“Spending totals were dragged down by weaker results from mid-size web sites,” Kantar notes.

Outdoor was up a healthy 4.9 percent, lifted by higher than usual spending from local retail and service businesses.

And radio rose 4.2 percent despite a 1.3 percent decline from local radio. Network radio balanced that out with a 26.3 percent gain, largely because Kantar added more networks to its tallies.

National spot radio got a boost from political, which accounted for about half the 9.4 percent gain during the quarter.

Kantar’s third quarter data mirrors numbers released last week by Nielsen, which said that ad revenue was up 7 percent during the quarter.

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