Nielsen: U.S. Advertising Spending Rose 2.4% I Q1 2005.

Advertising spending for the first quarter 2005 rose 2.4% over the same period last year, due to gains across major media, according to preliminary figures released by Nielsen Monitor-Plus, the advertising intelligence service of Nielsen Media Research.

Advertising spending increased in almost all reported media, led by Spanish-Language TV, Cable TV, and Magazines. Network Radio and National Newspaper were essentially flat, while Coupon and the top 100 Spot TV markets showed declines. “Taking a closer look at Spot TV’s performance for the quarter, the medium was down 3.9% overall; however, the smaller 101-210 DMAs experienced a steady 3.4% growth”, said Jeff King, managing director of Nielsen Monitor-Plus.

Category Spending

Spending for the 10 largest categories reached $9.9 billion in the first quarter, 3.9% greater than the same period last year. The Credit Card Services category, which continues to be the fastest growing in terms of percent increase (30.5%), continues to increase ad spending, exceeding $404 million dollars. Prescriptions Drugs, typically a category that shows substantial growth, has cut back spending $29 million (-2.8%).

Product Placement

Nielsen’s Product Placement tracking service shows significant growth in the integration of product occurrences in primetime broadcast network programming. The top 10 brands in the product placement category totaled 6,020 occurrences during the first quarter of 2005.

Jeff King observes, “Illustrating just how quickly product placement is growing, the number one brand, Coca-Cola Classic, had 1,931 brand occurrences for the quarter, compared to 2,320 for all of last year.” Coca-Cola Classic was also the number one brand for 2004. Coca-Cola Classic had nearly three times the number of occurrences than the number two brand, Everlast Apparel (691 occurrences). This is in part due to the brand’s relationship with American Idol.

The top 10 programs that featured product placements in the first quarter accounted for 12,867 occurrences. Further pointing to the rapid growth of this medium, this one quarter’s occurrences (12,867) is more than half the brand occurrences for the Top 10 Programs in full year 2004 (23,526).

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