The Sound And The Fury: 2006 US Ad Spending, By The Numbers

Just came across this summary of 2006 US ad spending from TNS Media.  It's striking that despite all the talk about online advertising's growth, Spot TV still outgrew it on an absolute basis, and TV as a whole is still outgrowing overall ad spending as a whole by 25% (5% vs. 4%, led by Spot and by the growth of Spanish language advertising). 

Advertising on the web is great, but having seen services like Spot Runner and Visible World, and related vertical efforts, TV may not be dead for a while.  Of course, as content from each begins to flow to each, and with mobile to spice things up further, perhaps the category definitions are becoming less useful anyway. 

This is a rear-view perspective.  While 2006 may have been the year of online video on the conference circuit, the ad models for this medium haven't yet been really worked out (though there are some interesting ideas out there), and both advertisers and media players are still "organizing for digital"  buying and selling.  So I'd expect the shifts everybody's been hyping to accelerate somewhat this year.

Of course, this is one summary, among many that might report the numbers differently, and it would be interesting to compare them to each other, and with what the leading prognosticators have been saying...

Comments

[Hollywood]

Don't forget Cheap-TV-Spots.com and Spotzer. Cheap TV Spots recent growth spurt is in Spanish language and international markets. Spotzer is euro-based but has a similar model to Spot Runner. Cheap TV Spots is consistently more inexpensive than either of its competitors and has the highest quality custom ads that can air locally, nationally or internationally without restriction. BareNakedAds.com produces ads for free along with remarkably cheap national air time packages. All of these services are indicative of a healthy TV spot market for a long time into the future. My prediction is that we will see a decline in individual small business online spending in 2008 - 2009 as those costs rise in respect to other, more traditional, forms of advertising and promotion.