TNS: First Half Radio Ad Spending Down 24.6%

Reports Ad Numbers Down

The first-half 2009 advertising expense numbers are in at TNS MEDIA INTELLIGENCE and unfortunately, it's more of the same. Ad spending on radio was off 24.6% for the first six months of the year.  Local spending fell 25.5%, while national spot spending dropped 29.2% and network radio fell 8.7%.  

The overall drop for radio was the largest by percentage among the media, ahead of newspapers (24.2%), magazines (20.9%), outdoor (15.7%) and television (10%).  Only Internet display ads (6.5%) and free-standing inserts (4.6%) showed growth in the first half. Overall, ad spending was off 14.3%, with second quarter off 13.9% year-to-year.

While itâ??s tempting to interpret this as a positive indicator that things aren't getting worse, the fact remains that the market has been steadily tracking at around 14%declines for several consecutive months.

The top-10 advertisers spent a combined total of $7,866.4 million, a 3.5% decrease from last year. Across the top 100 companies, spending fell by 6.2%.  PROCTER AND GAMBLE, last year's top advertiser, cut spending 20% to fall behind VERIZON, which moved up with a 3.1% increase in spending. GENERAL MOTORS, last year's third-place advertiser which went through a government bailout and packaged bankruptcy earlier this year, cut spending 25.9% to fall to fifth place, while SPRINT NEXTEL's 55.3% increase was the largest jump in the top 10.

By category, automotive fell 31.1% to $4.449 billion, but remained narrowly ahead of telecom (up 7.5%).  Financial services fell 24.3%.

"The rate of decline in ad spending was level throughout the second quarter," said JON SWALLEN, SVP Research at TNS MEDIA INTELLIGENCE. "While it’s tempting to interpret this as a positive indicator that things aren't getting worse, the fact remains that the market has been steadily tracking at around 14%declines for several consecutive months and this represents billions of lost revenue. Early data from third quarter hint at possible improvements for some media due to easy comparisons against distressed levels of year ago expenditures."

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