Advertising

Following several recent reports that suggest a thawing revenue stream for media outlets, analysts at research firm ZenithOptimedia are ratcheting up expectations for the 2010 ad market.

AdAge reports that ZenithOptimedia has raised its estimate for growth in global annual ad spending to 3.5% from its previous forecast of 2.2%.

According to the forecast, by 2012, the third year after the 2009 downturn, growth should equal roughly 5.3% — a smaller rate of recovery than has followed previous downturns, ZenithOptimedia said.

In North America, the region that ZenithOptimedia upgraded the most, an earlier expectation that ad spending would decline 1.5% this year has yielded to a new forecast of 1.3% growth.

Despite the rosier outlook, the study also predicted that the North American ad recovery would lag other markets across the globe.

It’s a big day for Times Square digital displays, the giant glowing signage that stops tourists in their tracks and many New Yorkers pass by without so much as a mental acknowledgment. Media behemoth News Corp., in partnership with Sony, is programming a 35′ by 40′ LED display at Broadway and West 43rd St. Capitalizing on the new display, the Republic of Turkey plans to run ads on the enormous screen, showing 16,000 commercials over eight weeks (that’s 2,000 commercials a week!). Turkey’s ads will also be shown on New Year’s Eve, the country proudly proclaims.

For its part, News Corp.’s Fox Sports will show tonight’s Major League Baseball All Star Game on the enormous display, starting at 8 p.m. In the future, the display will also show movie trailers, newscasts and commercials, and also this, from the News Corp. – Sony press release:

Visitors could also compete against each other in a real-time PlayStation 3 game, broadcast live to the screen, or see themselves displayed live in larger-than-life, high-definition video.

New York pedestrians first began ignoring the sign on July 8, when it made its display debut.

Ad revenue for LGBT publications rose to a record high of $349.6 million in 2009, according to a the Gay Press Report, a study by ad agency Prime Access and gay media (gay-media?) representative Rivendell Media. The Gay Press Report has been covering advertising in the gay and lesbian press for 16 years.

Ad revenue climbed 14% from 2008 to 2009. The Gay Press Report points out that overall consumer magazine revenue dropped 16% to $10.53 billion, its lowest level since 1998. Since 1996, LGBT ad revenue has climbed 377%, vs. 17% for consumer magazines writ large, the report says.

“The findings in the report confirm the strength and value of gay media,” said Prime Access founder and CEO Howard Buford in a statement. “Advertisers are finding the market to be a solid investment, and many publications in the gay press have increased ad revenue despite a very difficult media market.”

Gay-centric advertisements are also on the rise, the study found. In a shift that indicates an increasing desire on the part of advertisers to market directly to an LGBT audience, nearly 90% of ads appearing in gay publications cater specifically to gays.

PricewaterhouseCoopers today released its forecasts on the entertainment and media business through 2014. One of the big reveals, according to The Wall Street Journal, which got its hands on a copy of the report: online ad revenues will surpass those of newspapers, making the Internet the U.S.’ second-biggest generator of ad sales (TV, of course, is still the big winner).

The PwC study forecasts that online ads, not including mobile devices, will grow to $34.4 billion in 2014 from $24.2 billion in 2009, while newspapers lose ground, according to the Journal:

According to numbers released by the Newspaper Association of America earlier this year, print advertising revenue dropped 28.6% in 2009 to $24.82 billion. The PwC report estimates that print advertising in newspapers will h[i]t $22.3 billion by 2014.

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A Morgan Stanley analyst says that there’s a lot of growth potential in the online space, perhaps to the tune of $50 billion a year, minOnline reports.

Speaking at an Internet Week event, Morgan Stanley analyst Mary Meeker said that there’s a disconnect between the amount of time users spend online and the amount of advertising revenue digital platforms generate. Says minOnline:

Meeker finds that 28% of media time spent is now with the Internet even as only 13% of ad budgets go online. Meanwhile, 28% of media spend goes to print, which only takes 12% of our media consumptions.

Ad rates for online media currently lag those of other kinds, said Meeker. If online ad spending comes into line with expenditures elsewhere, digital platforms could see a big jump in revenue, provided companies are able to execute effective strategies.

Good news for the Don Drapers of the world (also, the magazines and newspapers of the world)! Spending on advertising rose a healthy 5.1% year over year for the first quarter of 2010, registering a gain for the first time in two years, according to a Kantar Media study reported by The New York Times.

Spending by blue-chip companies like Procter & Gamble, AT&T and Pfizer contributed to the quarterly gain, as did a rebound in ad buys by General Motors.

Sunday newspaper magazines, national newspapers and Spanish-language newspapers were among print properties to register gains. Local newspapers, local mags and B2B publications suffered losses.

(h/t Romenesko)

UPDATE: 12:30 p.m. — Your editor took a total faceplant early this morning when he said that the Publishers Information Bureau reported a 3.9% year-over-year first-quarter increase in ad revenue, when in fact the PIB reported the opposite: a 3.9% decrease in ad revenue. Apologies for the error. Here the post, with the required correction.

Total advertising revenue for magazines climbed fell 3.9% year over year to $4.05 billion in the first quarter of 2010, according to the Publishers Information Bureau. In the same period, the number of ad pages dropped 9.4% to around 35,000.

Total ad revenue increased mainly thanks to There were, however, big year-over-year gains in spending by several industries: toiletries and cosmetics (up 12%); automotive (up 16%); and financial, insurance and real estate (up 18%).

The industries that spent the most money in the first quarter were drug companies ($524.8 million), toiletries and cosmetics ($438.6 million), and food and food products ($465.7 million). The smallest ad spenders were financial, real estate and insurance companies ($160.9 million); transportation, hotels and resorts ($218.3 million); and technology ($175 million).

Not only were the technology industry and the transportation, hotels and resorts industry the smallest contributors, they also posted the largest declines in ad spending from the first quarter of 2009. Ad spending by transportation, hotels and resorts companies fell 18%. Technology companies spent 20% less compared with the year-ago period.

Although the total number of ad pages fell, a higher number of magazines showed improvement this year, compared with the first quarter of 2009:

In the first quarter, 85 magazines posted an increase in ad pages, compared to 15 magazines during the same period in 2009. One hundred and one magazines registered PIB revenue gains in Q1, versus 28 titles in the same period of last year.

Research group ZenithOptimedia predicts that print ad revenues will decline in 2010, even as the broader media industry faces a rosier outlook, according to a study published today over at paidContent.

ZenithOptimedia raised its 2010 forecast for worldwide ad spending growth to 2.2% from 0.9%, thanks mainly to the substantial growth it expects in television and Internet advertising. TV sales should grow 4.3% in the coming year, and Internet media buys should jump 13%, said ZenithOptimedia. Newspapers and magazines, meanwhile, face additional ad-revenue declines of about 4% each.

A pronounced decline in revenues amid an uptick for the broader media industry certainly wouldn’t offer much encouragement to print institutions. On the other hand, with many institutions diversified onto the Web, it’s hard to say that the study predicts print media’s imminent demise. We still may have to wait a decade or so to see that.

Ad spending took another nose dive in 2009, but the rate of decline slowed in the fourth quarter, according to a study released today by research firm Kantar Media.

Kantar determined that from 2008 to 2009, ad expenditures fell 12% to $125.3 billion. That’s not good, but the year-over-year rate of decline for the fourth quarter of 2009 was half that — 6%.

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A forthcoming study from research firm Outsell shows that digital media ad revenues will exceed print-ad revenues for the first time ever in 2010, according to a Forbes.com report. Says Forbes’ Dirk Smillie:

That number comes from Outsell’s annual advertising and marketing study, which collected data from 1,008 U.S. advertisers (both consumer and B2B) in December 2009. Of the $368 billion marketers plan to spend this year, 32.5% will go toward digital; 30.3% to print. Digital spending includes e-mail, video advertising, display ads and search marketing.

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