• by Sarah Mahoney  @mahoney_sarah, November 30, 2009

Even though retailers are hoping for much stronger sales than last year, they're not spending more on marketing to get them. BDO Seidman's poll of retailing CMOs reports that 55% say this year's holiday advertising budget is flat this year. In last year's survey, only 43% said so. Only 19% have upped the ad ante, leaving 26% who have cut spending.

But the results may be a little misleading, Catherine Fox-Simpson, a partner in the firm's retail and consumer product practice, tells Marketing Daily. "Ad pricing is down significantly this year," she says. "Ad space costs a lot less now than it did a few years ago, so retailers can get a lot more bang for their buck. Even if advertising budgets are flat, there could be significantly more advertising now than in years past simply by virtue of pricing being down."

Of the retailers most bullish on the economy -- those who expect a turnaround by the second quarter of next year -- 62% raised spending. And among those who don't expect much improvement until the third quarter or later, 50% cut their budgets.

The biggest winners are print -- which 64% say will get most of advertising spending, up from 57% last year -- and social media. Some 51% of retailers say social is part of this year's holiday plan; in 2007, it was just 4%. "Our observation has been that retailers and many other businesses are following the same philosophy," she says. "Everybody else is doing it, including our customers, so we need to as well."

Of those using social media, 76% plan to use Facebook, 50% will use Twitter, 14% will use MySpace, and another 14% will be on YouTube, with 10% on all four sites.

The poll, which included 100 CMOs at leading retailers, also detected a distinct pullback on green marketing, with only 35% planning to increase their push on green products, compared with 43% percent last year.

"Clearly, "greentailing" is in," she says. "Everyone's doing it and consumers seem to still be very interested in green initiatives. However, with the current economic landscape, a bargain mentality has become a bit stronger than a sustainability mentality. Retailers are playing to the bargain mentality more than anything else right now, but they are still maintaining green initiatives as part of their overall corporate image."