• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, January 11, 2011

According to data by Kantar Media, total advertising expenditures in the first nine months of 2010 grew 6.4% from a year ago and finished the period at $94.06 billion. Ad spending during the third quarter of 2010 was up 8.7% versus last year, the largest quarterly gain since the end of 2004.

Jon Swallen, SVP Research at Kantar Media, noted that "... the advertising recovery expanded during the third quarter to include stronger participation by the long-tail of marketers beyond the Top 1000... smaller advertisers are now as fully vested as their large counterparts... the advertising recovery has reached a significant milestone."

Television media continued to pace the advertising recovery. Spot TV expenditures surged behind the swell of political advertising and sustained demand from automotive marketers and retailers. Spanish Language TV spending rose aided by the World Cup event during June and July. Gains for Cable TV and Network TV were driven by sharply higher spending from the auto, financial service and consumer package goods categories.

Internet display advertising had the second largest growth rate among the media sectors compared to the year ago period. Outdoor was close behind.

Spending in National Spot Radio jumped and Local Radio rose, with each being paced by larger outlays from auto dealer and financial service advertisers. Network Radio registered a small increase.

Consumer Magazines, after a weak first quarter, rebounded solidly in subsequent months and year-to-date expenditures have risen 2.8%. Sunday Magazines benefited from higher spending by pharmaceutical companies and home improvement retailers.

National Newspaper spending rose, primarily from gains at the Wall Street Journal. Local Newspaper expenditures fell despite stable volume of ad space sold. Local Newspaper spending has now declined for 20 consecutive quarters.

Spending among the ten largest advertisers increased 5.9% to $11.91billion in the first nine months of 2010.

Procter & Gamble maintained its number one ranking, but its third quarter budgets were flat.

AT&T boosted expenditures with much of the additional money directed towards its consumer television service and this segment accounted for nearly one-tenth of the company's ad dollars. Despite a widespread surge in automotive category spending, General Motors was the lone auto advertiser in the Top Ten.

Expenditures for the ten largest advertising categories rose 7.4% in the first nine months of 2010 and totaled $53.55 billion.

Automotive was the leading category in both dollar volume and growth rate as spending accelerated reflecting the improved climate for vehicle sales. Within the category, manufacturers and dealers had comparable rates of increase.

Telecom was the second largest category with nine month expenditures growing a modest 4.7%. Slowing rates of spend in the wireless segment were offset by vigorous competition and larger budgets among TV service providers.

Year-to-date spending in Financial Services increased, although growth rates slackened in the third quarter. Results were skewed by a sustained marketing barrage from a handful of leading credit card issuers. More telling is the ongoing weakness in retail bank advertising and a recent slowdown by marketers of investment products.

In the third quarter of 2010, an average hour of monitored prime time network programming contained nine minutes, four seconds of in-show Brand Appearances and 14:47 of network commercial messages. The combined total of marketing content represents 40% of a prime-time hour.

The combined load of Brand Appearances and network ad messages in late night shows was 25:32 per hour, or 43% of total content time.

For the complete report from Kantar, please visit here.