Kantar: U.S. Ad Spending Down in Q3 2013

NEW YORK: Total advertising expenditures in the third quarter declined 1.9 percent from last year, finishing the period at $34 billion, according to Kantar Media.

The quarter faced a tough comparison, though, from the Olympics and election year spending in 2012. Without the benefit of an Olympics event, network TV expenditure in Q3 fell 17.9 percent compared to a year ago. Spot TV dipped 15 percent, largely due to the reduction from political ads.

However, other segments of the TV sector did show healthy gains. Spanish-language TV ad spending rose 9.9 percent, thanks to more hours of soccer programming on Hispanic networks. Spending on cable TV was up 5.1 percent; this area continues to get a boost from a increasing expansion of ad time.

For the year-to-date period of January though September, total spending on advertising increased 0.7 percent, reaching $102.5 billion.

“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,” said Jon Swallen, the 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 percent. This is more indicative of how the ad market is currently performing.”