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.

 From MediaPost. 

An average 74 million people visited a newspaper Web site each month in the third quarter of 2009, equaling just under 40% of all active U.S. Internet users, according to the Newspaper Association of America, citing research performed by Nielsen Online.

This is the most unique visitors recorded since the NAA and Nielsen began tracking newspaper Web site audiences in 2004; the previous record was 73.3 million in the first quarter of 2009.

Although year-over-year comparisons are difficult because of a big increase in Nielsen's panel size in June, the active-reach figure appears to be remaining stable, as newspaper Web sites have hovered around 40% for the last two years. 

Full story here.

The Association of Free Community Papers reported today that 70% of its members reported decreased revenues in the second quarter of 2009:

More than 70% of reporting publications indicated that revenues are down more than 1% in the latest AFCP quarterly revenue poll. This compares to 67% in the first quarter, 72% in the fourth quarter 2008 and 58% to 68% in previous quarters.

Hardest hit were the west coast (85%) and Mid-Atlantic (85%) regions with the Northeast reporting improved results. The Southeast continued to show about 70% of reporting publications were down.

The Midwest appears to be weakening as 73% indicated revenue declines. Previously, the Midwest had been much stronger than the rest of the country. The Rocky Mountain States still appear stronger than the rest of the country, but only 11 papers reported in this region.

Community Newspapers seem to be faring slightly better than shoppers during the past two quarters while rural markets appear to be slightly better than suburban ones. Only a few Urban publications reported results which make trends in this area difficult to discern.

MarketingCharts.com reports magazine ad pages continue to decline in Q2 2009. 

The trend of declining ad pages has been significant over the past year: in Q208, ad pages were down 8.2%, followed by a drop of 13% in Q3, 17% in Q4 and 26% in Q109.

The magazines that saw the steepest decline in ad pages:

• Country Home, which saw ad pages fall 80.7%
• Conde Nast Portfolio (now shuttered), which lost 69.1% of ad pages.
• Blender (also shuttered), which saw ad pages fall 82.2%.

In terms of the biggest ad-page gainers, People Style Watch saw ad pages leap 33.1%, while Country Weekly’s pages grew 33% and Muscle & Fitness saw a 13.1% gain, MediaBuyerPlanner wrote.