• Ad Age, Tuesday, November 14, 2006 11:17 AM

After over a year of uninterrupted "just-in-time" buying, advertisers are facing a sudden crunch, with media-agency executives reporting almost no quality inventory on the broadcast networks for November and December. As MindShare's co-president of national broadcast, Shari Cohen, puts it: "The retailers' avails have just sucked up the inventory."

Jewelry retailer Kay has begun its holiday push, along with Macy's, Old Navy, Wal-Mart, Kohl's, Target and electronics retailers Best Buy and Circuit City. "It's been a buyers' market for the last 18-24 months, and there's that mentality on the client and buyers' side that you can pull a rabbit out of a hat," says John Moore, a senior vice president-group media director at Mullen's MediaHub. "The reality is, from Black Friday [the day after Thanksgiving] until Dec. 12, it has bucked that trend. Hopefully, it didn't catch anybody by surprise."

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