US Advertising Expenditures for First Half Of 2009

Recently TNS media intelligence released a report on total US advertising expenditures during first half of 2009. According to the report, US advertising expenditures declined by 14.3% for the first half of 2009 over the same period in 2008 and reached $60.87 billion. Moreover, advertising spending during the second quarter of 2009 declined by 13.9% compared to the same period of 2008. This is the fifth consecutive quarter that depicted a decline over the same period in the previous year.

Media Wise Ad Spending
Across all the advertising media, Internet Display ads (+6.5%) and FSI’s (+4.6%) were the only categories that showed positive expenditure growth. Other media such as Print declined in large values within its subcategories and resulted in aggregate decline of 24.2% for Newspaper media and 20.9% for Magazine media. TV segment also portrayed an overall decline of 10%. In addition, total spending in Radio media was down 24.6% due to ongoing weakness in automotive, retail, and local service businesses.

Category Wise Ad Spending
The ten largest advertising business categories spent nearly $34 billion, a drop of 14.5% from 2008. Among the top ten advertising categories, Telecom (7.5%) and Restaurants (0.6%) maintained positive trend in during the period. The top categories that had negative trends are Automotive (top spender on advertising by category) declined 31.1%, Financial Services by 24.3%, Local Services & Amusements by 15.8%, and Direct Response by 14.3%.

Ad spend on Internet and Increased in Pharmacy Industry
Drugmakers cut consumer advertising for prescription drugs by 7.8% to $2.3 billion for the first half of 2009 over the same period in 2008. During the same period, spending on TV advertising down by 6% to $1.5 billion, Magazine ad spending dropped 20% to $610 million and newspapers ad spend dropped 33% to $49million. However, spending on Internet increased by 205% to $119 million, along with Radio by 83% to $17 million.

Overall, spending on Internet advertising during the first half of 2009 compared to the same period of 2008 is notable. Biggest traditional advertising media such as print and TV is on the quick slide, where as the new and innovative categories such as Internet and free standing insert advertising are gaining popularity.