How Bad Did Display Do In '08? Better Than Newspapers, Worse Than Everything Else: Nielsen
This story was written by David Kaplan.
With ad spending forecasts growing ever darker, the look back at last year isn't any consolation The Nielsen Company says that display ad spending fell 6.4 percent, worse than the tally for total expenditures, which was down 2.6 percent. The researcher found that of 19 categories, only two were saw spending increases, Hispanic Cable TV (up 9.6 percent) and Cable in general (7.8 percent gains).
As for the declines, newspapers suffered most. The worst performance was local Sunday supplements (down 11 percent), followed by local newspapers (-10.2 percent). Business-to-business mags was interrupted the series of newspaper segments with its 9.7 percent drop, as national dailies fell 9.6 percent. Putting it in context, those categories, along with national magazines' 7.6 percent decline, all did worse than display, while all the other formatsfrom outdoor to radio to broadcastexperienced fewer fall offs in advertising.
While display's growth rates had been trending downward last year, the the depth of its decline was a little surprising. Back in September, TNS Media Intelligence pointed out that during H108, display's double digit growth rates had been cut in half. The souring economy only accelerated the pullback the segment had started to face several months before.
By David Kaplan