Some promise for third quarter ad spending

The U.S. media economy appeared to take a step back during third quarter, with ad spending declining by 1.9 percent.

But that dip was entirely attributable to tough year-to-year comparisons with third quarter of last year, when Summer Olympic and record political spending took place.

Take out those two biannual events, and third quarter ad spending would have increased, according to Kantar Media.

A number of media, including cable, internet, out of home and magazines, saw solid gains.

“Comparisons against Q3 of 2012 are skewed by last year’s record-breaking Summer Olympic and political campaign ad spending, which artificially boosted the market,” says Jon Swallen, chief research officer at Kantar Media North America.

“Remove that incremental money from the year-ago base and spending in Q3 2013 was up 2.5 to 3.0 percent. This is more indicative of how the ad market is currently performing.”

Spending totaled $34 billion during the July to September period. Year to date, ad spending is up 0.7 percent, to $102.5 billion.

The impact of the Olympic and political spending was mainly seen in television, which fell by 6.2 percent.

Network TV saw a huge 17.9 percent year-to-year decline due to the lack of Summer Olympics revenue that gave NBC such a boost last summer.

The bulk of political dollars go to spot TV, and it took the second-biggest hit, off 15 percent from last year.

Other TV categories did much better. Spanish-language was up 9.9 percent, which Kantar attributed largely to an increase in the number of hours of soccer programming on Hispanic networks.

Cable grew 5.1 percent, which Kantar noted was tied to an increase in ad time.

Internet display advertising saw the biggest gain of any ad category in the quarter, up 14.5 percent, driven by gains in financial services, telecom and technology.

Outdoor was up 5.5 percent. The industry is seeing price increases from digital signage, which allows multiple advertisers to share time on one space.

Magazines actually saw a 5.5 percent rise in revenue, with consumer packaged goods and apparel seeing the greatest increases, although ad pages were off 0.3 percent.

Radio declined 4.8 percent. Though local radio was up 0.4 percent, national spot took an 8.5 percent hit, with restaurants, retail and financial services cutting back.

Newspapers also took a hit during third quarter, down 3.5 percent. Local newspapers dipped 3.2 percent, with automotive, retail and financial services seeing the most notable declines.

Tags: 2013 ad spending, ad spending, advertising, kantar, third quarter ad spending