Yearly Archives: 2004

The new reality of TV is that many of the country's biggest advertisers, including Coca-Cola, General Motors, and Procter & Gamble, are finding alternative ways to put their goods and their messages in front of consumers, and they're doing it with some of the money that used to pay for prime-time television commercials. Revlon is running minimovies in theaters, American Express airs short films on its Web site, and General Motors' Hummer H2 gets almost as much face time as the crime specialists on CSI: Miami . In a March survey of the Association of National Advertisers, more than 40 percent of those asked said they planned to move part of their next-year ad budgets to other outlets, such as the Internet, outdoor advertising, product placement, cable, and special events.

Marketing budgets are finally showing signs of life as the economy rebounds

The difference between 18- to 49-year-olds and 25- to 54-year-olds is much more than just a few years. The conventional wisdom in the advertising and television industries is that 18-to-49 is the "money" demographic; that they're the viewers that advertisers want most to reach because they have disposable income and are not yet locked into product loyalty. They are also the hardest to reach, in that they -- particularly young men -- watch less television. For years, NBC -- thanks to "Friends" and other youthful comedies -- has owned the 18-to-49 demographic. But now CBS, which steadily has been eating away at NBC's lead among younger viewers, is making the case that slightly older viewers actually are more important to advertisers. Not surprisingly, CBS has long held the lead in the 25-to-54 age group.

Media shops handling the two biggest print advertisers--General Motors and Procter & Gamble--have quietly signed up to use controversial new magazine audience research that will tell them not just how many people read the magazines they plan and buy, but also what their emotional connections are with the titles and their content. The research is controversial because some of the biggest magazine publishing groups are concerned that the data may destabilize the dominant market positions their publications have enjoyed on the basis of the traditional magazine industry currency, Mediamark Research Inc.'s (MRI) audience estimates.