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The Ad Economy Yup Its Bad

Mixed Media

by Jeff Bercovici
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Jan 15 2009 4:10pm EDT

The Ad Economy: Yup, It's Bad

How bad, you ask? Well, TNS Media Intelligence says total U.S. ad spending fell 5 percent last year, the biggest drop since 2001. And that estimate is based on numbers that excluded December, so the final tally could be even worse. Spending was softest in the fourth quarter, and it was weaker in print than in broadcast.

In the magazine sector, the fourth quarter was particularly brutal: Ad pages were down 17 percent year-over-year, according to the Publishers Information Bureau. The full-year decline of 11.7 percent was about as steep as the falloff from 2000 to 2001, when the double blow of the dotcom crash and 9/11 put a chill on spending.

But the 2000-'01 came after after a decade of strong growth. Since then, growth has been middling or nonexistent -- with the result that 2008's ad page total (220,813, representing 251 titles) is the lowest since 1996 (213,781, across 208 titles). □

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