Top 100 Up Ad Spend by Only 1.7 Percent
AdAge, apparently seeking to send the industry crashing as the booze leaves them post-Cannes, put out a report today showing that the top 100 U.S. advertisers raised their spending by just 1.7 percent in 2007, the slowest rate of growth among the top 100 since 2001. From the article:
Big marketers, facing a weakening economy and pressure to control costs, clamped down on spending. In fact, ad spending for these top-tier marketers collectively failed to keep pace in 2007 with real gross domestic product (up 2.2%) or with inflation (up 2.8%).Those lucky enough to be drawing down marketing budgets from Proctor & Gamble can rejoice, however, as the consumer goods giant became the first company to pass the $5 billion mark in U.S. marketing spending, upping their ad spend by 7.1 percent.
It's important to note that the report tracks only certain types of advertising, such as print which has been seeing declines for a number of years, while not tracking others, such as direct marketing, which is likely to fare better during a recession as advertisers becomes less interested in branding efforts and more in simply selling their goods and services.