TV advertising

Across all platforms, the spending on news media was up 4.1%, according to Standard Media Index, led by cable news (up 27.2%). News programming on broadcast TV declined 1% last month with NBC News down 2.8%. That came on the heels of the firing of the Today show’s Matt Lauer on Nov. 29. The Today show alone was down 24% in December, compared to December 2016.

One advertising forecast says TV advertising will grow by a much slower rate in the next two years — as digital media pushes marketers to shift budgets away from TV channels. Brian Wieser, senior research analyst at the Pivotal Research Group, says national TV advertising — without Olympic advertising — will grow 2.4% in 2016 and 2.2% in 2017. Earlier estimates by Wieser predicted growth of more than 3%.

As advertisers consider the best ways to spend their money, the excitement that once greeted the beginning of the fall television season has given way to anxiety given the challenges of the current TV landscape. Yet, advertisers have still poured billions of dollars into the fall TV season, which begins in earnest this week with a flood of new programming.

MoffettNathanson analyst Michael Nathanson keeps an eye on the big multimedia companies including 21st Century Fox, CBS and Disney. In this exclusive Q&A he talks about the TV advertising shortfall, the critical role of the NFL in broadcasting, why he think retrans and reverse comp will keep growing and more.

TKTKTKT

The “when” depends on which research you adhere to, but by nearly all accounts, digital advertising is going to overtake TV in the next five years. Forrester Research today prognosticated that interactive spending will achieve a 12% compound annual growth rate and total $103 billion by 2019. Compared to digital, television will grow at a slower rate and rise to $85.8 billion during the same time, Forrester said.

While eMarketer is predicting 56% revenue growth for digital video ads this year, there are hurdles to online video spending that will slow its growth over the longer term. “There are factors holding back digital video ads, not the least of which is that television advertising is still incredibly popular,” says Martin Utreras, senior forecasting analyst at eMarketer.

The agency is giving back $16 million in refunds to more than 18,000 customers of American Tax Relief, which advertised heavily on TV, radio and the Internet. The company promised taxpayers overwhelmed with debts to the Internal Revenue Service that it could significantly reduce their burden.

The enthusiasm for the Olympics has lifted the local TV market in Salt Lake, which buyers describe as healthy but not sold out. Overall TV spending is up over last year, with the tightest dayparts the news and primetime areas. Auto, financial and healthcare are among the categories driving the market.

Movies, Broadway shows and foreign auto advertisers are spending heavily, and there’s high demand for morning and latenight news.

The NFL is the latest to join Twitter’s TV ad platform Amplify. The deal marks the biggest sports-related commitment to date. It will allow broadcasters to show video clips and ads through tweets that are coordinated with what’s being shown on television.

Twitter has a ways to go before it can really crack big TV budgets. It has great traction among the media and plugged-in social and tech scenes, but it still has work to do in convincing broadcasters and big brands that it can really make a difference. That’s why it was eager to trumpet its new deal with CBS. The pair plan to push content out across the social network to help drive audience engagement and tune-in around TV content, but also to unlock opportunities for brands in the process.

Twitter added its biggest partner in CBS to its Amplify advertising program Monday. The network joins ESPN, AT&T and Ford Motor Co. to use the advertising service that sends out short messages on the social network. Twitter and CBS gave an example of an ad called “60 Minutes in 60 Seconds,” which promotes the network’s news magazine.

The Ad Council is using the second screen app for a campaign about emergency preparedness. “By integrating Shazam into this campaign, the Ad Council and FEMA will extend their message, providing additional facts, video and other resources that their audiences need to take action to prepare,” Shazam CEO Rich Riley says.

Pay-TV cord cutting will be minimal over the next several years. And while traditional TV viewership is in decline, TV will easily remain the most dominant for advertisers in years to come. “Even though some consumers are cutting the cord, reducing their subscriptions, or not subscribing when starting a new home, the impact to the pay TV industry over at least the next five years will be minimal,” says PwC’s Global Entertainment and Media Outlook.

The Boston media market has been healthy in 2012, and stations hope that will continue into 2013. But right now first quarter is looking like a buyer’s market. There is plenty of TV inventory available for first quarter and pricing is down slightly, in contrast to Boston’s very busy fourth quarter.

Ad spending returned to positive territory during the first quarter, after falling during the final three months of last year, but that hardly means that the media economy is in great shape. More and more, it’s a case of haves and have nots, with television and outdoor posting solid gains and just about everything else struggling. Jon Swallen, chief research officer at Kantar Media, talks about whether the media economy is mending, why General Motors slashed its spending and what the prospects are for print.

“Maximize Your Media Mix” panelists say TV and digital media are complementary outlets in a media mix designed to achieve specific reach and frequency goals for advertisers.

I’ve finally found a way to quantify the relative effectiveness of TV and online display advertising. It’s two decimal points. That’s how much more effective TV ads are, relative to online display ads on an impression basis.

Davenport & Co. analyst Michael Morris on Friday became the latest Wall Street observer to cut his U.S. advertising outlook amid a weak economy and discuss the  potential impact of the softer trends on big industry stocks. He lowered his ad growth estimate for 2012 and 2013 by one percentage point each to 3% and 2%.

There has “never been a better time for TV advertising to seize the moment,” Microsoft Advertising and BBDO Worldwide, a unit of the world’s second-biggest ad company Omnicom Group Inc., said in a study released today. The survey among 1,500 consumers in the U.S., China, Russia, the U.K. and Saudi Arabia says that “TV is a rich, powerful medium and advertisers should continue to be making great ads for it.”

At least in the near long-term, CBS appears confident it can continue to grow ad dollars even as ratings decline. CBS CFO Joseph Ianniello said Tuesday the network delivers largely unmatched reach, along with an environment that advertisers covet, and they will pay a premium for both. But he was much more bullish on CBS’s ability to grow with non-advertising streams, notably collecting carriage fees for its local stations and its affiliate body.

Researcher eMarketer predicts that U.S. TV ad spending will account for more than 39% of all major media spending by advertisers in 2015, fractionally higher than its share this year.

Randa Minkarah, Fisher Communications’ SVP of revenue and business development, explains how her company’s TV stations are working to sell multiple platforms to local advertisers. Fisher has created programs that deliver valuable content to an increasingly on-the-go consumer and provide new, cost-effective ad solutions that enable local businesses to better reach their target audiences. “We strongly believe in the future of hyperlocal and are confident that our approach can serve as a model for broadcasters looking to deepen their community ties, as well as better reach the online audiences and advertisers who are following them.”

A local Spanish-language television buy is an economically sound purchase in that not only are you accruing more eyeballs per dollar, but in most cases you’re probably not paying a premium for the opportunity. With 76% of today’s Hispanics choosing to speak Spanish at home, it’s imperative for marketers to understand that this language connects these valuable consumers to content, culture, country (of origin) and community.

Gary Carr, SVP and executive director of national broadcast at TargetCast tcm, talks about the hot scatter market, why broadcast pricing should be up in fourth quarter, and which cable networks are tops.

The television ad sector is experiencing robust demand, signaling that the overall advertising industry will recover faster from the recession than expected. “The success story, perhaps surprisingly, has been television,” said Steve King, chief executive at the ZenithOptimedia media division of the Publicis Groupe.

Today at Business Insider’s Ignition 2010, Dave Morgan made an uncommon claim for an Internet advertising veteran, particularly one who pioneered the kind of targeting everyone takes advantage of today. His claim: that TV ads, the blunt instrument of marketing and the $70 billion-pound gorilla of advertising, are “wildly underpriced.”