After Two Slow Years, an Industry Rebound Begins

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/03/business/media/03adco.html?_r=1&ref=business
Television advertising, whether through integrated-brand campaigns like Microsoft’s or otherwise, has been one of the bright spots as the advertising industry begins to recover from the devastating effects of the recession and marketers experiment with a variety of new ways to reach the audience.

During the financial crisis and its aftermath, most advertisers reduced spending in virtually all forms of media, even those that had been enjoying strong growth in ad revenue. Now, a recovery seems to be taking hold on Madison Avenue and conditions are widely perceived as improving.

According to data from Kantar Media, advertising expenditures for all media for the first half of 2010 increased 5.7 percent from 2009 to about $63.6 billion. Television advertising led the pack in spending because of an increase in demand from the automotive and retail markets, and political advertising.

Spending on advertising in local newspapers showed a significant decline over the last 19 quarters, with a 4.6 percent decrease for the first half of 2010 compared with the same period in 2009, according to data from Kantar Media.

For the first time, advertisers are projected to have spent more on online ads than on newspaper ads in 2010, according to data by eMarketer.

“The bad economy has actually accelerated the shift to digital advertising,” Geoff Ramsey, the chief executive of eMarketer, said in a statement. “Online ads, especially search ads, are increasingly seen by many marketers as a more reliable bet than print ads, which are often difficult to tie to a measurable financial result.”

For brands like Microsoft, Web analytics and research are driving much of the investment into digital media.