Wowa!Whats Goin On?
Magazine advertising figures are way down. And to make things worst one of my secret addictions, American Idol is down 10% in their debut ratings.
Rate-card reported ad revenue declined more precipitously as the year went on, dropping 13.8 percent in the fourth quarter and 7.8 percent for the year. Ad pages fell 17.1 percent in the quarter and 11.7 percent for the full year. Real Estate and Insurance is off 36% for the last quarter of 2008 and 17% for the year.
Media Week intuits that this has been caused by the market conditions, especially at the end of the year. However, one has to wonder how much of the spend is moving online. Especially, in light of the recent Century 21 Announcement that they are killing their TV spend and taking it to the web.
So what does American Idol have to do with ads? Well if their viewership is down, then an advertiser will not be as willing to pay as much as they did before, if at all. Is it just that the market has spoken and Idol is tired? Or is it that people are watching less TV as a whole?
The data says yes 2.5 million people are watching less TV. And
Deloitte indicating that Millennials, the generation of 14- to 25-year-olds, watch just 10.5 hours of TV a week.
That compares to 15.1 hours for those belonging to Generation X (ages 26-42), 19.2 hours for Baby Boomers (43-61) and 21.5 hours for Matures (62-75).
Lest one assume Millennials are shunning broadcast and cable in favor of watching DVDs on their TV screens — they’re not. They spend less time watching DVDs of movies and TV shows on television sets, 4.8 hours a week, than do Gen Xers.
TV does remain the most influential advertising medium going, followed by magazines, the Internet, newspapers, radio and billboards.
Social networking sites are considered separate from the rest of the Internet, and they are the seventh-most influential place to advertise, followed by in-theater ads, DVDs, blogs (again, distinct from the Internet), video games, mobile phones and virtual worlds.
Samsung 52 ” LCD HDTV big Seller this Year at Amazon
Well, it seems again that online will have beaten the offline retailers.
While retail was/still is giving it away at drastic discounts. Online etailers like Amazon are getting high fives.
Amazon.com Inc. said Friday that the 2008 holiday season was the online retailer’s “best ever,” with more than 6.3 million items ordered and 5.6 million units shipped during its peak day on Dec. 15.
SpendingPulse PART Of MasterCard Advisors tracks total sales paid for by credit card, checks and cash has said its preliminary data indicates that retail sales dropped between 5.5 percent and 8 percent this holiday season compared with last year.
However Barclays Capital analyst Douglas Anmuth said Amazon’s competitive position has actually strengthened during the downturn, as some brick-and-mortar retailers were forced to close stores and had difficulty obtaining inventory.
Based on the number of items ordered, Amazon said its holiday bestsellers included the Nintendo Wii, Samsung’s 52-inch LCD HDTV, the Apple iPod touch and the Blokus board game.
Cyber Monday: Christmas Grinch Slayer?
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Comscore reports Cyber Monday saw $846 million in online spending, a 15 percent increase over the November loss of 2%.
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51 percent of consumers indicated that the level of promotions and discounts is higher this year than last year
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12 percent said that there appeared to be fewer, suggesting that retailers are having to be more aggressive in discounting to spur consumer spending.
What Recession? Net Sales Up
A Shop.org survey says that 84.6 million consumers plan to shop online from home or at work today. This is up from 72 million in ‘07 and 60.7 million in ‘06. The survey found that 37.2 percent of adults will shop online today, up over 16 percent over last year.
83.7 percent of retailers will have a special promotion for Cyber Monday, up from 72.2 percent last year.
So one has to wonder is the net not hit by the recession that we have supposedly been in for one year? However, Black Friday did find a slight year over year increase as did overall Thanksgiving sales.
