From MarketingCharts.org

Ad Spending Climbs 5.1%; TV Gains 10.5%

U.S. ad spending saw some significant increases in the first quarter, with Q1 spending hikes “broadly distributed” across advertisers and categories, according to Kantar Media.

“That’s an encouraging signal for the market going forward,” says Jon Swallen, svp of research at Kantar.

Overall, ad expenditures rose 5.1% in Q110 from a year ago, to $31.3 billion.

Of the 19 media types tracked by Kantar, 13 experienced a spending increase in the first quarter.

Spending by Media

TV
Overall, TV gained 10.5%:
—Spot TV surged 22% due to a torrent of additional money from the automotive, retail, financial services and political categories. Despite the growth, spot TV has still only recovered to a level last seen in 1997.
—Network TV jumped 11.6%, due to a boost from Winter Olympics.
—Cable TV was up 8.2%
—Spanish language TV was up 7.2%
—Syndication was down 13.2%

Radio
Radio was up 7.4% overall:
—National spot radio soared 19%, with help from increased spending in telecom, financial services and auto categories
—Local radio was up 4.6%
—Network radio was up 3%

The Radio Advertising Bureau’s figures on radio growth were slightly less optimistic. The RAB reported earlier this week that radio advertising was up 6% in the first quarter.

Print
Print media lagged the overall ad market. Magazines were down 3.2% and newspapers slipped 3.7%:
—Consumer magazine spending fell 3.9%
—B-to-b magazines dropped 8.4%
—Local newspapers slipped 5.6%
—Sunday magazine spending jumped 13.7%
—National newspapers managed to gain 9.1%, primarily from increases at the Wall Street Journal.

Internet, Outdoor and FSIs

Internet (display ads only) gained 5%, while outdoor was essentially flat, down 0.4%. FSIs jumped 12.8%.

Full story here

From PaidContent.org:

 For the most part, The Washington Post Co. (NYSE: WPO) had a pretty good Q1—except, of course, for the magazine division (i.e., Newsweek), which saw revenue plunge 36 percent to $29.4 million. While Newsweek had a for sale sign hung on it this week, the newspaper division’s troubles have sharply abated. In Q1, newspaper revs declined 3 percent, a vast improvement over last year’s deep 22 percent drop. But the good news on the newspaper publishing side, which is primarily represented by WaPo’s flagship, came from the web, as display revs jumped 17 percent. (For more details on Newsweek’s dismal Q1, see Staci D. Kramer’s piece here.)

Earlier this week, the WaPo’s online-only Slate Group said that its ad revenues were up 52 percent. The positive results at Slate, which is part of the newspaper division, weren’t able to obscure the continued struggles for its print-based sibling as the washingtonpost.com’s classified sales were down 22 percent, hardly better than Q109’s 23 percent fall.

Here’s a snapshot of the newspaper division’s during Q1:

—Print ad revenue at The Washington Post fell 8 percent to $68.7 million, largely due to pullback in general and retail advertising.

—The paper’s daily circ dropped 12.5 percent, while Sunday circulation slid 10.4 percent. The company blamed it on the abnormally higher circ surrounding the news around last year’s presidential inauguration.

—The division posted an operating loss of $13.8 million, considerable improvement over last year’s $53.8 million loss.

Overall, net income was $45.4 million ($4.91 per share) versus the $19.2 million ($2.04 loss per share) net loss in Q109. As usual, the company’s strength came from its cable and education units.

New forecasts show 2010 may not be as bad as previously thought for magazines, however a decline is still projected.

From MIN Online. Full Story here

Barclays Predicts Ad Rebound, Easing Print Pain
Friday, January 29, 2010
Steve Smith

In a striking spot of optimism, Barclays Capital adjusted its estimates of U.S. marketing spending for 2010 upward considerably from previous predictions. For magazines in particular, the analysts changed an earlier forecast of -10% growth to only -3%.

Magazines are bouncing back ahead of newspapers, projected to be down 5.8%, although Barclays had last predicted that both print platforms would suffer equally this year. Overall analyst Anthony J. DiClemente is expecting a 3.5% increase in total ad spending led by TV advertising, which is likely to get a boost from the recent Supreme Court ruling that removes limits on corporate political spending. Total ad sales for the year could reach $167.6 billion this year.

“While we expect modest aggregate growth for local media advertising in 2010, we also expect national advertising to outpace the growth of local advertising and take share from local overall,” DiClemente wrote in his report.

DiClemente says that companies simply have to come back into the marketplace to hawk their goods, and that almost all platforms will benefit. Radio will rebound from a previous estimate of -4% to 2.2%, again because of more political expenditures. Outdoor advertising will see some of the greatest improvement, up 6% over an earlier call for flat growth. And the Internet, both local and national, will gain 8.9%.

Barclays is the latest ad market prognosticator to revise upward its view of 2010 spending. Earlier this month Interpublic’s Magna group declared that overall ad spending for the year would decline only .1% compared to an earlier forecast of a 1.3% drop. For magazines, however, Magna maintained a more pessimistic view than Barclays, expecting a 7.3% decline.