Ad Spend Rises Across Most Media

US advertising spend in the first quarter of 2006 rose 5.6% over the same period last year, according to Nielsen Monitor-Plus, the advertising intelligence service of Nielsen Media Research.

Ad spending increased in almost all reported media, led by Internet, Spanish-Language TV and Outdoor. Coupon, Local Newspaper and Network Radio experienced slight declines. Business-to-Business magazine and Cable TV growth was almost flat.

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Source: Nielsen Monitor-Plus
Internet data provided by Nielsen//NetRatings
Please Note: Estimated online spending reflects display based advertising only. Reporting does not take into account paid search, service fees, performance-based campaigns, sponsorships, barters, partnership placements, advertorials, promotions or desktop applications. Syndicated TV was omitted due to changes in tracking, 'Newspaper' reflects display ads only and 'Coupon' reflects CPG products only.

The top 10 advertisers spent $4.6 billion between them, up 11.4% compared to Q1 last year. AT&T, Verizon Communications and General Electric had significant increases in year over year spending, up 76.5%, 46.1% and 54.4%, respectively. A few advertisers cut back spending while the majority increased.

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Spending for the 10 largest categories reached $10.5 billion, up 6.1% on Q1 last year. Local Automotive Dealerships and Direct Response products were the only two categories to show slight declines in spend - the rest were generally up by a substantial amount. The Restaurant industry continues to be the fastest growing in terms of percent increase over last year, followed by Credit Card Services, with an increase of 22.7% and 22%, respectively.

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Nielsen's Product Placement tracking service continued to show significant growth in the integration of product occurrences in primetime broadcast network programming, with the top 10 brands in the product placement category totalling 4,371 occurrences through the first quarter of the year. Coca-Cola accounted for more than half of the total with 2,551 occurrences, nearly all of them during American Idol, while Nike brands took two of the top ten spots.

The firm is online at www.nielsenmedia.com .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.

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