U.S. Adspend Up in 2010

NEW YORK: Total advertising expenditures in the first nine months of 2010 were up 6.4 percent from a year ago, finishing the period at $94.06 billion, according to new data from Kantar Media.

Adspend during the third quarter of 2010 was up 8.7 percent compared to last year, marking the largest quarterly gain since the end of 2004. "The advertising recovery expanded during the third quarter to include stronger participation by the long-tail of marketers beyond the Top 1000,"said Jon Swallen, the senior VP of research at Kantar Media. "Having fewer resources, this segment was previously cautious about raising budgets and it lagged behind the early year rebound in ad spending. Smaller advertisers are now as fully vested as their large counterparts and in that sense, the advertising recovery has reached a significant milestone."

TV continued to pace the ad recovery. Spot TV expenditures spiked 27.8 percent. Spanish-language TV spending grew 11.9 percent, boosted by the World Cup during June and July. Cable TV rose 9 percent and network TV by 6.1 percent.

Internet display advertising had the second largest growth rate among the media sectors, up 7.7 percent compared to the year-ago period.