Ad Spending

SAN FRANCISCO - To punctuate his company's $1.1-billion purchase by Yahoo Inc., Tumblr co-founder and Chief Executive David Karp let loose in a blog post with a celebratory expletive. It was classic Karp, a 26-year-old high school dropout who built one of the Web's most popular outlets for personal expression. It was also a clever way to send a message to Tumblr users: It may have been bought out - earning Karp about $275 million - but Tumblr was going to stay irreverent.

SAN FRANCISCO - To punctuate his company's $1.1-billion purchase by Yahoo Inc., Tumblr co-founder and Chief Executive David Karp let loose in a blog post with a celebratory expletive. It was classic Karp, a 26-year-old high school dropout who built one of the Web's most popular outlets for personal expression. It was also a clever way to send a message to Tumblr users: It may have been bought out - earning Karp about $275 million - but Tumblr was going to stay irreverent.

The four remaining GOP presidential candidates and their supporters will have spent $10.4 million on broadcast television advertising in South Carolina by the time polls close there Saturday, swamping the state with finger-pointing spots. And that total doesn't include the more than $2 million of combined air time purchased by Rick Perry and Make Us Great Again, a pro-Perry "super PAC," before the Texas governor pulled out of the race Thursday. Back in 2008, when five Republicans were vying for the nomination, the television ad war totaled $6.9 million, according to Kantar Media's Campaign Media Analysis Group.

The alliance between Los Angeles mayoral candidate Wendy Greuel and the Department of Water and Power workforce strengthened Wednesday as a committee run by leaders of the utility's main union launched TV advertising to buttress her candidacy just as she reduces her own spending on television ads. Working Californians to Elect Wendy Greuel, a committee controlled by the union's leadership, bought about $500,000 worth of TV airtime over the next...

U.S. advertising spending dropped 2.6% last year as the worst recession since 1982 forced automakers, movie producers and drug makers to slash marketing, researcher Nielsen Co. said Friday. Outlays fell almost $3.7 billion from the year earlier to $136.8 billion, according to preliminary figures by New York-based Nielsen. All of the top 10 advertisers cut their budgets last year, led by Chrysler's majority owner, Cerberus Capital Management; Ford Motor Co.; Time Warner Inc.

Advertising spending likely will grow a slim 2.5% in the United States this year, its slowest increase in a decade, because of an unexpectedly steep economic slowdown, said Robert Coen, the ad industry's most prominent spending forecaster. The estimate is less than half the 5.8% growth Coen predicted six months ago and well below last year's 9.6% rise. This year's projected growth rate to $249.8 billion would be the slowest since 1991, when ad spending in the United States fell 1.2%, Coen said.

Global advertising spending is expected to grow 3.9% at constant prices this year, driven by record levels of consumption in the United States and Europe, a new survey said Monday. Leading media-services agency Zenith Media said ad spending in the Asia-Pacific region would return to growth of 2.4% in 1999 after falling 5.7% last year, but Latin American expenditures would sag under the weight of Brazil's economic downturn. Worldwide Internet display advertising is estimated to hit $3.

The bankruptcy of General Motors Corp., one of America's biggest advertisers, deals yet another blow to TV stations, newspapers and magazines that already are reeling from the recession. Sports franchises also could feel the sting, with analysts expecting the automaker to continue cutting back its multimillion-dollar sponsorships of professional teams. GM shelled out $2.1 billion on advertising last year, second only to Procter & Gamble Co., according to Nielsen Co.

Soon, anyone who wants to know how much a political candidate spent on a commercial will be able to find out with the click of a button. The Federal Communications Commission voted Friday to require local television stations to publish on their websites detailed information about political advertising, including the cost of specific commercials. Although such material is already required to be made available to the public, anyone seeking to know what candidates are spending, and on what programs, typically has to visit a local television station and make a request to see what's known as the "public files.

U.S. advertising spending saw its biggest drop in seven years as companies cut marketing budgets to weather the economic slowdown. Ad spending fell 3.7% in the second quarter from a year earlier, the biggest decline since 2001, market researcher TNS Media Intelligence said. Advertisers are shifting to the Internet, cable television and syndicated TV to target specific audiences, TNS said.

The London Olympics and political campaigns pumped nearly $2 billion into the U.S. advertising market during the third quarter of 2012, according to consulting firm Kantar Media.  "Political campaigns and the Summer Olympics delivered their expected bonanza in the third quarter, adding roughly $1.8 billion of incremental spending to the marketplace," Jon Swallen, Kantar Media North America's chief research officer, said in a statement. Third-quarter advertising expenditures of $34.5 billion represented a 7.1% jump from a year earlier, Kantar reported.

Advertising spending in the U.S. cooled during the April-through-June quarter, increasing just 0.9% from the year-earlier period to finish at $34.4 billion, according to a new analysis by Kantar Media. For the first half of the year, ad expenditures for all U.S. media totaled $67.1 billion -- an increase of 1.9% compared with the first six months of 2011, according to Kantar Media, which tracks advertising expenditures. The second-quarter pull-back could be an unsettling sign.

Bouncing back from disappointing trends in 2011, total advertising spending in the first quarter of this year inched up 2.6%, compared to the previous year period, according to a new report from Kantar Media. Expenditures for all media totaled $32.9 billion, Kantar said Monday. “After a sluggish start in January, the pace of measured ad spending quickly accelerated and grew at an average rate of more than four percent during February and March, the best performance in more than a year,” Jon Swallen, chief research officer at Kantar Media North America, said in a statement.

The vast majority of Facebook users say they ignore ads on the social network, according to a survey whose findings are expected to add to questions about the company's revenue prospects. Four out of five Facebook users said neither advertisements nor comments on the social network have ever led them to buy a product or service, according to the poll by Reuters/Ipsos. The poll comes as Facebook Inc. faces increasing investor scrutiny over its main revenue source —advertising — and whether it can wring more ad revenue from its more than 900 million users.

Apparently, it just feels like really negative campaign. Media watchers at Kantar Media have been counting ads in the presidential race and their tally shows a surprising near-even split between positive and negative ads. Elizabeth Wilner at the firm's Campaign Media Analysis Group notes that 51% of the 63,793 general election spots were positive, while 49% were negative. The group tracked ads aired from April 10, when Mitt Romney became the presumptive GOP nominee, to May 24. “The results defied the [conventional wisdom]

Soon, anyone who wants to know how much a political candidate spent on a commercial will be able to find out with the click of a button. The Federal Communications Commission voted Friday to require local television stations to publish on their websites detailed information about political advertising, including the cost of specific commercials. Although such material is already required to be made available to the public, anyone seeking to know what candidates are spending, and on what programs, typically has to visit a local television station and make a request to see what's known as the "public files.

U.S. advertising spending is seen as "challenged" for the rest of the year after falling 0.3% in the first half to $72.6 billion, TNS Media Intelligence said. It was the first time U.S. advertising spending has fallen for two consecutive quarters since 2001, TNS said. TV ad spending dragged the market, falling 2.4% to $31.6 billion. Newspaper spending fell 5.8% to $12.9 billion. Radio spending fell 2.7% to $5.1 billion. The declines offset gains from Internet display ad spending, which rose 17.

Travelocity.com Inc. the leading travel Web site, announced cost cuts that included laying off 320 people, or 10% of its non-customer service work force, instituting a hiring freeze and cutting advertising and other discretionary spending. Citing a sharp reduction in air travel after the Sept.

Facebook will be the top recipient of social media advertising spending this year, according to a survey from the Creative Group. The Menlo Park, Calif., outfit surveyed 500 advertising and marketing executives in the first quarter on how social media ad dollars will be spent. More than half said they expected companies to increase their advertising or marketing investment in Facebook. Other social networks such as Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn and YouTube hovered around 40%. Marketers were also asked if they would decrease their spend on social media this year.

A new statewide poll shows Rick Santorum has a narrow advantage over Mitt Romney among Michigan Republican primary voters. The key question is whether money will trump momentum with less than two weeks before the state's key vote. The Detroit News survey of 500 likely voters puts Santorum ahead of Romney 34% to 30%, with Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul lagging behind at 12% and 9%, respectively. Twelve percent were undecided. A loss for Romney in Michigan, which he won in 2008 and where he claims favorite son status, would truly shake up the GOP race and potentially extend the nomination battle well beyond March.