• `The Australian, Tuesday, May 20, 2008 10:16 AM

The Olympics in Beijing this summer are expected to attract unprecedented attention from the entire world, and Earth's advertisers are preparing to grab as much of it as they can. But new data suggests that the money they plan to spend this summer might be coming out of first-quarter budgets.

Many of the largest multinational sponsors of the Olympic Games curbed spending on traditional TV, newspaper and magazine ads in China during the first quarter, according to research by Nielsen. Olympic sponsors "don't have limitless marketing budgets, and must carefully plan the best way to spread their ad spend," said Richard Basil-Jones, the Asia-Pacific managing director of Nielsen Media Research.

The Publicis Groupe media agency Zenith Optimedia said advertisers worldwide will spend $3.1 billion on the Olympics this year, of which $900 million will be spent in China.

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