Spot spend helps drive 6.4% growth in first nine months of 2010

More good news on ad spend last year: The first three quarters last year saw 6.4% growth over last year, finishing the period at $94.06 billion. Television led the way, with Spot TV up 27.8%, fueled by political and sustained demand from automotive. Spanish Language TV spend was up 11.9%, aided by the World Cup event during June and July. Cable TV was up 9% and Network TV was up 6.1%, driven by auto, financial service and consumer package goods categories.

National Spot Radio also saw some substantial growth in Q1-Q3, up 15.9%. Local Radio rose 3.8% and both were driven by with larger spend from auto dealer and financial service advertisers. Network Radio was up 1.7%.

Ad spend during Q3 2010 was up 8.7% versus last year, the largest quarterly gain since the end of 2004.

Internet display ads had the second largest growth rate among the media sectors, up 7.7% compared to the year ago period. Outdoor was close behind with a gain of 7.3%.

Consumer Magazines, after a weak Q1, rebounded solidly in subsequent months and YTD spend has risen 2.8%. Sunday Magazines (+8.1%) benefited from higher spending by pharmaceutical companies and home improvement retailers.

National Newspaper spending rose 6.8%, primarily from gains at the Wall Street Journal. Local Newspaper spend fell 4.4%. Local Newspaper spend has now declined for 20 consecutive quarters.

Across the Top 1000 advertisers, representing three-fourths of the measured ad economy, spedn rose 7.3% in the first nine months of the year. The comparable growth rate for the long-tail of small advertisers beyond the Top 1000 was just 3.3%. However, in Q3 the respective figures for these two segments similar at 9.1% and 8.1%.

“The advertising recovery expanded during the third quarter to include stronger participation by the long-tail of marketers beyond the Top 1000,” said Jon Swallen, SVP Research at Kantar Media, which published the findings. “Having fewer resources, this segment was previously cautious about raising budgets and it lagged behind the early year rebound in ad spending. Smaller advertisers are now as fully vested as their large counterparts and in that sense, the advertising recovery has reached a significant milestone.”

Source: Kantar Media
1. Figures tabulated from Kantar Media’s Stradegy™ application and cover all measured media, including: Network TV (6 networks); Spot TV (125 DMAs); Cable TV (71 networks); Syndication TV; Hispanic Network TV (4 networks); Consumer Magazines (226 publications);,Sunday Magazines (7 publications); Local Magazines (27 publications); Hispanic Magazines (19 publications); Business-to-Business Magazines (288 publications); Local Newspapers (147 publications); National Newspapers (3 publications); Hispanic Newspapers (48 publications); Network Radio (5 networks); National Spot Radio (205 markets); Local Radio (32 markets); Internet (1,989 sites); and Outdoor. Figures do not include public service announcements (PSA) or House ads.
2. Cable TV figures do not include Hispanic cable networks.
3. Spot TV figures do not include Hispanic local stations.
4. Spanish Language TV includes 4 Hispanic broadcast networks, 4 Hispanic cable network and 70 local Hispanic TV stations.
5. Magazine media includes Publishers Information Bureau (PIB) data and reflect print editions of publications.
6. Newspaper media figures reflect print editions of publications.
7. Internet display expenditures are based on 1,989 sites with measured activity for an equal number of months in both time periods
8. FSI data represents distribution costs only

Spend among the 10 largest advertisers increased 5.9% to $11.91 billion in the first nine months of 2010. Procter & Gamble maintained its number one ranking by spending $2,252.7 million, an 18.7% increase versus a year ago.

AT&T boosted spend 15.7% to $1,510.7 million. Much of the additional money was directed towards its consumer television service and this segment accounted for nearly one-tenth of the company’s ad dollars. Rival Verizon Communication cut its spending by 13.1%, to $1,406.8 million.

Despite a widespread surge in automotive category spending, GM was the lone auto advertiser in the Top Ten. GM invested $1,480.5 million, up 20.6% from a year ago.

Source: Kantar Media
1. Figures do not include FSI, House Ads or PSA activity.
2. The sum of the individual companies may differ from the Total shown due to rounding.

Categories
Expenditures for the ten largest advertising categories rose 7.4% in the first nine months of 2010 and totaled $53.55 billion.

Automotive was the leading category in both dollar volume and growth rate as spending accelerated 23.7% to $9,151.5 million, reflecting better vehicle sales against the bad news comps of 2009. Within the category, manufacturers and dealers had comparable rates of increase–22.8% and 25.2%, respectively.

Telecom was the second largest category with nine month spend growing 4.7% to $6,369.4 million. YTD spend in Financial Services increased 9.4%, to $5,604.6 million. Results were skewed by a sustained marketing barrage from a handful of leading credit card issuers. More telling is the ongoing weakness in retail bank advertising and a recent slowdown by marketers of investment products.

Only two of the top ten categories posted spending declines. DR budgets shrank by 6.2%, to $4,549.9 million. Pharmaceutical advertising was down 8.5%, to $3,160.9 million, on broad reductions across top spending brands.

Source: Kantar Media
1. Figures do not include FSI or PSA activity.
2. Miscellaneous Retail does not include these retail segments: Department Stores, Home Furnishing/Building Supply Stores.
3. The sum of the individual categories may differ from the total due to rounding.

Branded Entertainment
In Q3, an average hour of monitored prime time network programming contained nine minutes, four seconds (9:04) of in-show Brand Appearances and 14:47 of network commercial messages. The combined total of 23:51 of marketing content represents 40% of a prime-time hour. The top five brands ranked by total amount of Brand Appearance time were Chef Revival, Viking appliances, Bud Light beer, Yamaha music equipment and Ford.

Unscripted reality shows had an average of 11:10 per hour of Brand Appearances as compared to just 6:17 per hour for scripted programs such as sitcoms and dramas. Late night network talkers had an average of 10:49 per hour. The combined load of Brand Appearances and network ad messages in these late night shows was 25:32 per hour, or 43% of total content time.

Source: Kantar Media
¹ Figures include network advertisements, station promotions and PSAs. Local commercial time is excluded.

RBR-TVBR observation: It’s interesting to see the rate of growth of Internet was not as high as in the past. It was just above outdoor and radio’s growth, according to this report. Part of the reason, as we see, it was Political dollars and Automotive–both are traditionally visual-based creative and television still gets the lion’s share of those type of ads. When mobile broadband video ads improve in quality and seamlessness, this could change things.