TV Still Attracts The Bulk Of Global Ad Spend

Nielsen’s Global Adview Pulse survey looked at the volume of investments channelled in the first quarter of the year. The results found that TV was, once again, the most preferred media channel used by global brands for spreading their marketing message.

On the researcher’s website that TV captured a 59% share of media spend in the first three months of the year, seeing a 3.5% growth globally. Nielsen projects that TV will remain the dominant media type, at least in the short run, despite seeing a 2.9% drop in spend in Europe, where the uncertain economy continued to hurt marketing budgets.

The medium that saw the biggest growth in global ad spend was display Internet advertising. Although measured in a smaller number of countries, Nielsen estimated its growth rate at 26.3% and pegged its share of total ad spend at 4.4%. The improvement was particularly strong in Asia-Pacific and Latin American countries, where marketers spent 33.2% and 49.2% more on Internet advertising, respectively. Even Europe, which is experiencing tough economic times, recorded an increase of 10.4% in display Internet expenditure. Outdoor displayed the second strongest increase in spending, rising by 4.3% to bring its media spend share to 3.3%.

In the case of print advertising, both magazines and newspapers suffered a decline in spending in the first quarter, seeing investments drop by a respective 2.8% and 4.7%. However, the two still account for a combined 30% of marketers’ total spend, suggesting that print is still an important component of their media mix.

Cinema was also among the media types to record a fall in spend, exhibiting a 5.8% decline and a 0.3% share.

The figures suggest that, despite the slight changes in traditional media, the world is gradually shifting to a different spending mode, making way for growth in the digital space, Nielsen’s Randal Beard commented.