DMN3 Blog

A number of reports on U.S. advertising spending for the first quarter of 2011 have now been released. Several interesting trends and observations can be gleamed from these reports…

As I have reported in previous posts, the actual dollar figures between the organizations that monitor U.S. advertising expenditures may differ somewhat. Taken together, they give us a good picture of advertising spending trends in the U.S.

Kantar Media recently released their advertising expenditure data for the first quarter of this year. They found that total advertising expenditures were up by 4.4 percent for the first quarter compared to the first quarter of 2010. The $1.4 billion market expansion represents a continuing recovery for the advertising industry, although a moderation of growth from 2010. There were clear winners and losers in specific channels that represent trends that have carried over from 2010.

The specifics can be found in the following Kantar Media table:

Nielsen’s numbers are a bit different because of the differences in databases of measured media between the two organizations. Here’s their take on 2011 first quarter advertising expenditures for media channels overall. You can see that their numbers reflect more growth in television, radio and magazine advertising than does the Kantar data. Nielsen also shows a greater decline in newspaper advertising expenditures (10 % decline compared to 2.1% decline). What you should note is the agreement between the two organizations regarding the “relative” growth among the various advertising mediums.

Nielsen’s data reveals an overall increase in ad budgets by a larger number of advertisers as the economic recovery continues.  We will see if the recent slowdown of economic expansion impacts future growth of advertising spending in the coming quarters.

Television advertising continues to attract the most spending. Nielsen shows that overall television advertising surpassed $18 billion in the first quarter of 2011. Kantar’s data indicates that “sports programming” led a large growth of approximately 32 percent in cable TV advertising that propelled the growth in overall television advertising expenditures.

Newspaper advertising is the only advertising media that reflects a decline from first quarter 2010 expenditures. This marks the 22^nd consecutive quarter of decline for newspaper advertising spending.

Other interesting observations from the Nielsen 2011 first quarter data include:

• Mobile advertising is growing rapidly and is moving increasingly into mobile apps. Nielsen’s research confirms that teenagers are much more receptive to mobile ads than their elders. Fifty-eight percent of teens state that they “sometimes” or “always” look at mobile ads when using mobile apps.
• I’ve previously posted on the topic of advertising trust. The Nielsen data confirms earlier data that the most trusted form of “advertising” is the recommendation of someone we know cited by 76 percent of U.S. Internet users, followed by consumer opinions online (cited by 49%).
  
• Commercials that aired during the Super Bowl were 58 percent more memorable than ads that aired during regular television programming. 
• In turn, Super Bowl commercials that included social media tags that directed viewers to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc to view a brand’s online content were more memorable than other Super Bowl ads without such tags.
• Online ad revenues grew by 23 percent in the first quarter
• Online display ad revenues grew by 14.6% in the first quarter of 2011

In an upcoming post, I will explore the growth in online advertising in the first quarter of 2011 in more detail and its implications for the near future. Until then, stay tuned…