• by June 11, 2004

UPFRONTS, OUTLOOKS, GLASSES HALF-EMPTIED, AND ROSE-COLORED GLASSES - There was a bit of encouraging, or depending on your perspective, disheartening news buried in the release of an Association of National Advertisers member survey released Thursday in conjunction with its Print Advertising Forum in New York. About half (49 percent) of the marketers said they plan to boost their overall ad spending (for all media) next year, while 51 percent expect it to either stay the same (44 percent) or decrease (8 percent). So, we ask you, does this mean the media spending glass of national marketers will be overflowing next year, staying level or evaporating slightly? It's hard to say at this point, though indicators are clearly perking up just in time for a series of new, near-term forecasts, including next week's AdWatch: Outlook 2004 conference in New York and Universal McCann's annual mid-year update the following week. Based on the turnout in this year's upfront television marketplace and the recent tracking of ad spending indices from MediaPost's Advisory Panel, we think the forecasts will fall in favor of "half-full" scenarios, not the "half-empty" ones.

Interestingly, the sentiment of national marketers is not that far off from their media agency counterparts represented in the MediaPost Ad Confidence Index, which showed a slight increase in ad spending expectations just as the 2004-05 upfront negotiations were heating up. More than half (54 percent) of media planners and buyers say their demand for advertising media has grown vs. last year. Only 41 percent say it is flat, and just 5 percent expect it to decline.

And while the exact tab on the 2004-05 upfront marketplace has yet to be finalized, it looks like it's definitely more up than down, though it seems to be up more with cable than with broadcast.

But based on the ANA's survey, print media - especially newspapers - would be right to be most concerned. Only 44 percent of the ANA members said they expect to boost their magazine ad budgets over the next year, while only 25 percent expect to hike newspaper ad spending.

ANA Member Ad Budget Expectations Over The Next Year

	Increase	Decrease	Stay The Same
All Media	49%	44%	8%
Magazines	44%	41%	15%
Newspapers	25%	60%	16%
Sunday Supplements	8%	68%	23%

Source: Association of National Advertisers.

MEDIA CONVERGENCE, TRIBUNE-STYLE - For a moment there, we thought we were sitting in the middle of the ANA's annual TV Advertising Forum on Thursday, but then we quickly clicked on our PDA and sure enough it said, "June 10, 2004 - ANA Print Day." So why was there a Tribune executive sitting up on stage talking about his broadcast and cable TV channels? Had we nodded off into some ANA forum-esque dream sequence? Nah. After shaking our head clear of our normal stupor, we realized that David P. Murphy, president of Tribune Media Net, was speaking metaphorically when he said, "The newspaper is really more like the television set. There are broadcast channels there. There are cable channels there." His point was that contrary to the perception of a lot of advertisers, you could target discrete groups of consumers within and throughout a newspaper by running ads in certain "channels." Presumably, he meant the display kind, not 30-second spots.