• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, March 16, 2009

The general economy has the consumer confidence index. Now Madison Avenue has its advertising equivalent. Advertiser Perceptions Inc., which conducts semi-annual surveys of top advertiser and agency executives, today is releasing the first in a series of bi-monthly polls tracking the confidence top ad execs have in spending budgets across the major media. Not surprisingly, the first in this new series of Advertiser Optimism Reports, as API has dubbed them, indicates that the ad industry continues to have a great deal of optimism for online media. But it also shows it is waning fast, dropping at a faster rate than any other major medium.

 

Cable TV, which also is among the media with the highest optimism levels, conversely, is actually rising amid the continued uncertainty in the general economy, reaffirming that TV remains a safe harbor, and go-to medium during shaky times, and that cable TV is where the audience momentum is.

"With the recession upon us, we made the decision to provide our clients with bi-monthly survey of 200-plus media decision-makers in order to track advertiser optimism through 2009," Ken Pearl, who founded API several years ago to provide media sellers with ongoing tracking of customer satisfaction with media buys, similar to what J.D. Powers' studies do for the automotive industry.

API's semi-annual omnibus studies survey about 1,500 executives in the Spring and Fall of each year at major marketers and advertising agencies who have responsibility for buying or approving media buys. The new confidence reports will be a more continuous subset of 200 of those types of executives, and API plans to conduct at least six of them, running through 2009.

The index is derived from asking ad execs to describe whether their plans for buying each medium will "increase," "maintain," or "decrease" over the next six months. A score heavily weighted toward "increasing," is deemed "advertiser optimism," while one weighted heavily on "decreasing" is considered "advertiser pessimism.

Based on those criteria, the overall mood of the marketplace has grown significantly more pessimistic since API's last general survey in the fall of 2008, when only 30% of respondents planned to decrease their total ad spending. The percentage of ad execs now planning to cut their overall ad spending is now at 35%. The percentage planning to increase their ad spending remained the same at 26%.

And while a majority (52%) of executives still plan to increase their ad spending on online media, which is down from 68% who planned to boost their online ad spending last fall. In fact, online ad optimism has shown a continual erosion, declining from 72% last Spring, and 76% in the Fall of 2007.

Mobile advertising, which is still deemed only an emerging category, is the only medium other than cable TV to have shown a consistent progression upward. Most traditional media other than cable TV, have shown a continual erosion. (See table below.)

The relative ad confidence levels of cable and broadcast TV are interesting, because the timing comes just before the major cable and broadcast networks begin their upfront advertising sales pitches in anticipation of the spring/summer upfront advertising marketplace. While some pundits already are writing off the strength of Upfront 2009-10 due to the languishing economy, others believe marketers will come back in force, because of the audience guarantees and cancellation options associated with upfront advertising buys, which may make them a good hedge in an uncertain economy. Even so, the smart money appears to be placed on cable vs. broadcast. At least for now.