In Depth
Total TV Ad Spending Barely Rises
Advertising spending rose a tiny bit in the first quarter compared to last year, according to new figures from Nielsen Monitor-Plus.
Nielsen said total ad spending was just over $30 billion, up 0.5% in the first quarter.
With the Writer’s Guild of America strike going on, broadcast network TV took a 3.4% hit, with spending dropping to $6 billion. Spot TV in the smaller markets fell 3.83% to $380.2 million. In the large markets, it was off 0.4% to $5.6 billion.
At the same time, spending on cable TV rose 12.9% to $5.9 billion and syndication gained 2.3% to $755 million.
Spanish language TV rose 7.7% to $2.4 billion and TV aimed at African Americans rose 12.9% to $215.3 million, according to Nielsen.
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Comments 1
EmmGee
I'm not sure what constitutes as "spending". From what I saw and continue to see, Tv ads are now a rarity. Even the #1 newscast in my market advertises "back in 35 seconds". This clearly is showing how unsold the newscast is and how uncreative sales departments are getting. Its also showing that ad prices are not on the decline, due to a recession. I also saw "MONSTERS INC." on Saturday night. The extra fillers were clearly a hopeles attempt to fill for time. I saw "mike's new car", several elongated previews for summer shows, a Pixar Movie preview, etc.
Overnight news, I mainly see 3 spots in clusters. The spots are Gold4Cash, Enzite, Scooter Store. These ads repeated, this morning, 4x in 1 hour.
The point is that spending is clearly down... and had been for a while. Being in the media, I know that most broadcast outlets, various mediums (TV, Radio, Newpaper, Online), need to be flexible for prices. Mt particular company had learned to lower prices, since revenue went way down. The only spots that aired, were continued contacted spots.