Is media advertising is still falling?

Posted Jun 10th 2009 2:30PM by Connie Madon
Filed under: Consumer Experience, Marketing and Advertising, Economic Data, Personal Finance, Recession

During a recession, people try and find ways of cutting expenses. Consumers buy less and marketers reduce their ad dollars. These trends are still continuing. TNS Media Intelligence reported that advertising spending fell 14.2% to $30.2 billion in the first quarter and up from the 9.2% in the last quarter of 2008.

As with all data, there are people on both sides of the numbers. Sir Martin Sorrel, WPP chief executive said that advertising market is getting worse. In contrast, Maurice Levy, chief executive of Publicis, the French marketing group called the bottom in the ad market. He said:" the fall in advertising expenditures should be over."

Local ad markets have been hit hardest, especially ads covering autos, retail and local services. TNS Spot TV fell 27.5% year on year in the first quarter. Newspapers are down a whopping 26.8%. National newspapers are down even more for a drop of 28. 5% Spending in national media fell 8.5%, more than the 4.2% drop for network television.

Obviously automotive ads were down sharply with a 28.4% drop. Translated in dollar terms, this amounted to $2.3 billion, almost half of last year's amount. General Motors spent $424.2 million in the quarter, a drop of 19.1%

Financial services advertising fell 18.1%.

So what does all this mean? It seems that until consumers are able to loosen their wallets and demand rises, advertising is likely to remain in the doldrums, perhaps for the rest of the year.

Do you see business picking up in your area?

Tags: advertising, TNS Media, TnsMedia