• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, March 21, 2011

According to a recent report from Kantar Media, total advertising expenditures increased 6.5% in 2010 and finished the year at $131.1 billion. Ad spending during the fourth quarter of 2010 was up 7.0% versus last year, propelled by the long-tail of small advertisers outside the Top 1000.

Ad expenditure highlights include:
Spot TV expenditures jumped 24.2% in 2010. Spanish Language TV spending rose 10.7%, assisted by the World Cup event. Higher sell out levels helped lift Cable TV expenditures by 9.8% and healthy demand from CPG marketers and credit card companies pushed Network TV spending ahead by 5.3%.

Internet display advertising increased 9.9% compared to the prior year, the second largest growth rate among media sectors. Outdoor advertising was close behind with a gain of 9.6%.

National Spot Radio brought in 18.6% more ad dollars versus 2009 and Local Radio achieved a 4.9% increase. For each of these, higher spending was driven by the financial service, media and auto dealer categories.

Expenditures in Consumer Magazines were up 3.3% while National Newspapers rose 2.7%, primarily due to publishing expansion at the Wall Street Journal. Ad spending in Local Newspapers sank 4.6% versus a year ago despite a small uptick in the volume of space sold. Local Newspaper spending has now declined for 21 consecutive quarters.

Spending among the ten largest advertisers in 2010 reached $16,345.8 million, a 3.7% increase compared to last year. Among the Top 100 marketers, a diversified group accounting for close to one-half of all measured ad expenditures, investments climbed 8.8%:

• Procter & Gamble was the top advertiser with spending of $3,123.9 million, up 17.7% compared to a year ago
• L'Oreal posted the largest rate of increase, up 30.6% to $1,112.4 million
• Ford Motor upped its total ad budgets by 11.1% to $1,132.2 million
• General Motors reduced spending slightly, down 1.3% to $2,130.7 million
• AT&T raised expenditures by 12.1%, to $2,092.8 million
• Verizon Communications trimmed ad spending 15.2% to $1,823.2 million
• Pfizer was down 11.7% to $1,228.7 million
• Johnson & Johnson reported down 7.5% to $1,139.7 million

 Expenditures for the ten largest advertising categories increased 6.5% and totaled $74,125.1 million:

• Automotive was the leading category in both dollar volume and growth rate, finishing 2010 at $13,026.0 million, up 19.8%. Category spending grew almost twice as fast as new vehicle sales (19.8% versus 11.1%)
• Telecom was the second largest category with 2010 budgets rising 4.0% to $8,751.5 million
• Expenditures for Personal Care Products were up 11.7% to $6,161.0 million Food & Candy category rose 7.1% to $6,672.3 million
• Financial Services increased 6.0% to $7,689.7 million
• Direct Response budgets fell by 5.8% to $6,143.5 million
• Pharmaceutical expenditures dropped 8.2% to $4,327.8 million, the lowest dollar amount for this category since 2003

Branded Entertainment within network prime time and late night programming identifies brand appearances and measures their duration and attributes. Given the short length of many brand appearances, duration is a more relevant metric than a count of occurrences, says the report:

• In the fourth quarter of 2010, an average hour of monitored prime time network programming contained six minutes, fifty seven seconds (6:57) of in-show Brand Appearances and 14:50 of network commercial messages. The combined total of 21:47 of marketing content represents 36% of a prime-time hour
• Unscripted reality programming had an average of 14:19 per hour of Brand Appearances as compared to just 4:50 per hour for scripted programs such as sitcoms and dramas
• Late night network talk shows had an average of 10:31 per hour. The combined load of Brand Appearances and network ad messages in these late night shows was 25:22 per hour, or 42% of total content time

For additional information about the study, and access to the PDF file with charts, please visit Kantar here.