Analysis: Media Forecast 2010

It would be an interesting, albeit purely academic exercise to imagine how the advertising industry would look right now if we hadn’t been hit with the biggest economic downturn since the 1930s. Perhaps instead of hastening the migration of ads from traditional media to the Internet, the Great Recession actually slowed things down. Imagine if marketers, media firms and advertising agencies hadn’t been in such a cautious frame of mind over the past year or so and unleashed breakthrough ideas that moved us further along on the continuum than we are today. We’ll never know because the ad industry’s running narrative, like most other industries, got hijacked by the economy. The story now is a continued migration to new media but complicated by what looks to be a fragile economic recovery. Thus, the bottom line looms large over the industry in 2010. In general, it is projected to be a better year than the previous one, but not by much, at least here in the U.S. Still, everyone’s up for some good news at this point. At least you can count on the Winter Olympics and the congressional races for a bit of relief. As with previous years, we expect that the action will be on the margins. The bulk of media dollars still changes hands the old-fashioned way. The Internet may claim more ad dollars in Great Britain right now, but in the U.S. it’s still not even close. That will no doubt change but not over the next year. A more likely scenario is that some concepts will undergo a stress test. For instance, in a media landscape with hundreds of channels, what is the value of a broadcast network? What role does salesmanship play in a business as data driven as marketing is today? Does it make sense for magazine and newspaper publishers to continue to give away their content if Web ad revenues still are a fraction of those derived from print? Do those publishers have any choice? If history is any guide, things won’t play out the way you might guess. Disruptive technologies are, by definition, impossible to predict and immensely powerful for that reason. Nevertheless, here are our best guesses of where things are going, barring any unforeseen and inevitable new developments. —The EditorsFORECAST 2010: CABLE TVBy Anthony CrupiWith apologies to Thomas Friedman, the world may well be flat, but it’s also an inclined plane. Substitute the rigors of economics for physics and 2009 was a year in which the proverbial (and euphemistic) excrement ran downhill at an unnerving rate, so much so that anyone who happened to be camped out at the lower latitudes didn’t exactly come out smelling like a rose.As it happens, ad-supported cable enjoys an enviable perch near the vertical; as such, the top-tier networks were able to get through the year relatively unsoiled. Along with record ratings and a resilient ad sales marketplace, signs that the tidal murk of recession is beginning to recede have many observers anticipating an even stronger 2010.One ad sales chief, who spoke on condition of anonymity, says that the last dark cloud on the cable horizon has been dispelled by recent consumer behavior. “We’ve been holding our breath, but it looks like the holidays were a success,” the executive says. “Any momentum we had going into next year would have been wiped out if Christmas had been [lousy].” Holiday retail spending was up 2.3 percent during the week of the 25th, while year-over-year activity for the peak November-December period improved 3.6 percent, per SpendingPulse, a service from MasterCard Advisors.The health of the scatter market is an area of concern for the cable nets, which were forced to hold onto a sizable chunk of inventory in the 2009-10 upfront. Per the Cabletelevision Advertising Bureau, dollar volume in the summer bazaar was down 13 percent to $6.6 billion, a decline that reflected the irresistible force-meets-immovable-object dynamic of the marketplace. At the time, ad sales bosses characterized the upfront pullback as a calculated risk; at this juncture, some network execs say they should have held onto even more inventory, such has been the strength of scatter. In any event, leaving money on the table has been a boon to high-end cable nets, which saw fourth-quarter scatter pricing coming in at 20 percent over upfront levels. Those premiums should continue to roll in throughout Q1, as channels such as USA Network, TNT and FX welcome back their popular original scripted series. First-quarter prime-time inventory is already tightening, as advertisers look to align themselves with some consistent reach vehicles. “It’s an unprecedented situation in that Q1 cancellations were minimal,” says one ad sales boss. “Nobody took options, and while that made me breathe a little easier back in November, now I’m thinking it would have been nice to have some of that [inventory] to resell at an even higher CPM.” Networks that specialize in unscripted fare may be less certain about what’s around the corner. “Cable’s higher inventory levels encourage buyers to wait for the best deals, resulting in less visibility,” says Oppenheimer analyst Jason Helfstein. Cable’s ratings story continues to cast a spell, and 2009 marked the ninth straight victory over the broadcast nets. By year’s end, cable accounted for 60.4 percent of the overall TV household share, while its standing among viewers 18-49 was nearly twice that of the big four (50.5 to 27.1).That said, aggregate ratings growth is expected to taper off, commensurate with penetration. Some 20 cable nets (including TBS, Discovery Channel, Nickelodeon and USA) have surpassed the 100-million sub mark, reaching 87 percent of the nation’s 114.9 million TV households.If saturation has a dampening effect on dynamic ratings growth, that’s offset by the concomitant revenue gains. Per SNL Kagan data, ad-supported cable nets in 2010 will haul in $27.8 billion in sub fees, up 9.6 percent from the prior-year period.Naturally, cable ad sales dollars are expected to rise in the new year, although analysts are divided on the rate of improvement. According to PricewaterhouseCoopers projections, spending on network cable in 2010 will grow 3.6 percent to $20.2 billion, while SNL Kagan projects greater year-on-year growth, calling for a 5.6 percent rise, to $18.2 billion.Already there are indications that 2009 will be remembered as an aberration, says Derek Baine, senior analyst at SNL Kagan. “It’s likely to be just a blip in the long-term growth of an industry that has increased revenue at a CAGR of 12.6 percent over the past decade,” Baine says. “Going forward, we expect the margins won’t be crushed like they have in other media.”While cable continues to steal share from broadcast, that pattern isn’t reflected in the cost of a spot. Per Kagan, the average cable CPM grew just 2.1 percent in 2008, down from a 2.7 percent increase in the two previous years. (On an average CPM basis, prime-time inventory on cable costs about one-third as much as broadcast.)The two worlds are about to get much cozier, as Comcast awaits regulatory approval of its $30 billion merger with NBC Universal. The inquest is expected to carry on for the better part of a year. For many, a Comcast-owned NBC marks the zero hour for the broadcast model, which lies well south on the inclined plane from cable and its dual revenue stream.As Comcast suits up for battle, CEO Brain Roberts has suggested that the flagship network is safe. The day the deal was announced, Roberts said the operator is “committed to trying to see ways to make [NBC] successful,” adding that “broadcast television is an important part of the fabric of America.” But make no mistake: Roberts is a cable guy, through and through. “The cable programming channels are really the best part of the business,” Roberts said. “NBC and Universal are storied assets...but it comes down to the cable channels.”FORECAST 2010: PRINT MEDIABy Lucia MosesPrint publishers are bracing themselves for another tough year in 2010.Advertising won’t decline as much as it did in 2009, when the luxury category, the lifeblood of many titles, cut back sharply, and for many large advertisers, magazines became a noncore buy. But the medium will continue to contract as advertisers shift their budgets from traditional to more measurable, digital media. U.S. magazines’ share of the ad pie will slip to 11 percent in 2010 from 11.8 percent the year before as magazines’ projected ad growth, at negative 6.2 percent, trails total U.S. media growth of 0.2 percent, according to Magna Global’s December forecast.“I’m not naïve,” says Mark Ford, president and group publisher of Time Inc.’s News Group, comprising Time, Fortune and Sports Illustrated, who predicts flat ad revenue for the year ahead. “It’s going to be slow, steady growth. And the whole picture is not going to improve until the economy improves.”And with fewer dollars floating around, observers predict more magazines will fold. The entertainment, shelter and business categories are seen as particularly vulnerable either because they’re crowded or their endemic ad base is struggling.While magazines’ problem is more of an advertising than a readership one, negativity surrounding the medium is emboldening clients to push for lower pricing, buyers say. Says one, on condition of anonymity: “They think magazines are dying, so why should they pay an increase?”Titles that stay in business will try to woo advertisers with integrated or high-impact ads. To that end, Ford’s group, for one, is finalizing partnerships to create TV extensions for Time, Fortune and SI.“Content integration will continue to be important,” says George Janson, managing partner, director of print, GroupM. “We’ll see more impact units, with advertisers trying to break through the clutter. I think magazines will be a lot more accommodating.”While their readership has been stable, magazines have been challenged to monetize it in the form of price increases. To the extent circulation is based on ad support and that newsstand sales reflect consumers’ willingness to part with their money, publishers are likely to continue to reduce rate base and frequency.“2010 is going to be a cautious year,” says David Leckey, executive vp, consumer marketing at American Media Inc. and vice chairman of the Audit Bureau of Circulations. “By and large, people might look at reduction in circulation versus price increases.”Still, many magazines can count on readers to continue picking them up for their visually rich reading experience. The same can’t be said for newspapers. Their core daily news offering is easily replaced by free content online, while younger readers’ preference for the Web will challenge newspapers’ ability to find new readers. On the ad front, national papers stand to bounce back when financial advertising recovers, while local newspapers will remain an easy target for cuts by large advertisers. Magna calls for U.S. newspaper advertising to decline 9.2 percent to $23.4 billion following a 25.7 percent drop in 2009, its share slipping to 17.6 percent from 19.6 percent.Newspaper publishers, facing an uncertain year ahead, are placing top priority on improving their Web sites for readers and advertisers, a recent study by Kubas Consultants found. The study also predicted that newspapers might find the bottom of their decline this year or at least decline less. Meanwhile, one-fourth of newspaper execs said they planned to launch new specialty products in 2010, despite tight operating budgets. Stephen Gray, former managing director for the American Press Institute’s Newspaper Next project and now an independent consultant working full time for Morris Communications, predicts more newspapers will try micropayments, metered solutions and walling off select content as they try to replace disappearing ad revenue. “We’ll see all kind of experimentation,” he says.Innovation will be a theme for magazines in the year ahead, although its impact is unclear. Anticipated e-readers that will offer a dynamic platform for magazines and basis for charging readers are generating excitement among buyers, if not actual revenue.“Having our ads as part of these e-reader experiments is really important,” says Audrey Siegel, co-founder and executive vp of independent media agency TargetCast tcm. “We need to see how they work so when the medium is ready, we’ll be ready as advertisers.”Meanwhile, new magazine measurement services from MRI and Affinity will deliver ad recall data on an issue-specific basis, and buyers are looking at how they those services can improve how they use the medium.As research gets better, the bar for magazines also gets higher with clients who are putting greater pressure on magazines to show a link between print ads and sales.“We’re still going to have to sell the power of magazine brands, but now I think we’ve got more data to do that,” says Brenda White, senior vp, publishing activation director, Starcom USA. “But we’re still going to have to tell the story. And we’re going to have to be driven by results.” FORECAST 2010: DIGITAL MEDIABy Mike ShieldsThe tricky thing about any sort of forecast for 2010 is that even though the recession appears, at least on paper, to be near an end, this was no ordinary recession for the media business.“It’s difficult to separate what’s cyclical and what’s structural,” says eMarketer CEO Geoff Ramsey. That’s undoubtedly true for media like newspapers and radio, which have felt the earth shake beneath them this year. But it’s also true for a still-maturing medium like digital.Overall, eMarketer predicts that online advertising spending will increase by 5.5 percent to $23.6 billion in 2010, reversing a 4.6 percent decline last year. But all won’t be well on the Web, which has seen several major issues exposed and exacerbated by the recession. As it turns out, not all traditional brands love banner advertising. There is still far too much display inventory out there. And even the red-hot video segment lacks a sure business model.Most buyers and sellers at least expect that the ad marketplace should be slightly more organized and predictable than in 2009, when clients released budgets late and then often made frequent cuts. However, the recession may have spurred some brands to permanently change their Web-buying patterns, believes Brad Davis, senior vp, West Coast multimedia leader for Disney Online.“We’ve really seen a mix, with some clients planning way far out in advance, as far ahead as Q4 [of 2010]. And then we’ve seen a continuation of holding onto the cash until the last minute—and then a quick release of this cash,” says Davis. “With the variety of options [buyers] have in the marketplace, this is going to be part of the new reality.”That variety of options dynamic isn’t likely going to change this year, regardless of whether the economy bounces back. “The difference between the Internet and traditional media like TV is that there are infinite possibilities” online, says Scott Schiller senior vp of ad sales, Comcast Interactive Media. “Why would that change in 2010?”That likely means that ad networks aren’t going anyplace. And exchanges and demand-side buying platforms are poised to play an even bigger role in 2010. All that suggests that it’s going to continue to be tough for midsized publishers who are committed to traditional, brand-oriented direct selling. “Advertising cannot support all the content that is out there … so you have this sagging middle,” says Ramsey. Which is why he and others expect that 2010 will likely be the Year of Experimenting With Pay Models. That’s clearly a priority for newspaper Web sites, and may be for several top video sites like Hulu.Tracey Scheppach, senior vp, video innovations director, Starcom Worldwide, hopes that sites like Hulu and YouTube don’t prematurely impose restrictive subscription models, though she acknowledges the medium’s major challenge.“A huge issue in online video is, ‘What is the business model?’ We’re going to make progress, and I wouldn’t bet on what it’s going to be,” says Scheppach. “But every piece of research I’ve seen says that people want free, ad-supported video.” One way the online video model can be improved is by establishing a standard creative unit. That is the goal of The Pool, Starcom’s ongoing research project, which will reveal its first findings in February.eMarketer predicts that video spending will surge by a healthy 40 percent in 2010 to $1.4 billion. Still, that figure pales in comparison to the $11.4 billion in spending expected to go to search, still the medium’s dominant sector. Yet the steady search space will also see change in 2010 as Microsoft and Yahoo’s partnership finally takes hold, and Microsoft continues to push Bing. Nicola Smith, supervisor of emerging trends at Moxie Interactive, predicts that the recent deals that both Microsoft and Google made with Twitter will also impact the segment. “The incorporation of social media into search is really going to help filter and optimize the types of content we’ll get as users,” she says. “It’s only going to strengthen [search engines’] appeal.”Many in the digital media space are hopeful that display advertising can be improved dramatically by becoming a lot more like search through advanced targeting technology and data collection. However, for that to work, the industry must stay ahead of a regulation-minded administration in Washington—something to watch closely in 2010. “We will be going backward several steps if we don’t,” says Ramsey.Another hot issue for the new year is the same hot issue from the past few years: Just how does social networking fit into the digital media mix? Many contend that while nearly every major advertiser is interested in social media in some fashion, the true value for brands on sites like MySpace and Facebook lies in customer retention and analytics, rather than as vehicles for display ads. “Monetization is still going to be a struggle for these sites,” says Smith.Of course, no digital forecast is complete without someone extolling mobile’s potential for the coming year, and someone else tempering that prediction. 2010 is no different. Per eMarketer, mobile ad spending should jump by 42 percent this year; yet the medium represents just 3 percent of digital spending.But at the very least, “in certain categories, mobile will have a definite seat at the table,” says Schiller. “Media buyers like to buy what they know and understand. And every one has a Blackberry and iPhone.”FORECAST 2010: NETWORK TVBy John ConsoliDespite the struggling economy and predictions of deep advertiser cutbacks in spending, the broadcast television networks cumulatively drew solid ad revenue in Q4 2009, a trend that is expected to continue at least through the first quarter of 2010, sellers and media buyers agree.Upfront spending cancellation options for Q1 2010 were exercised at extremely low levels, and with demand for scatter inventory high, scatter pricing is running at double-digit increases over the upfront. That, too, is expected to continue at least through March.Brian Weiser, director of global forecasting for Magna Global, sizes up advertiser demand for network programming this way: “While network television has lost some revenue as a result of audience fragmentation, the highest-rated programs are still on the broadcast networks. And the relative ease of buying packages of large, broad-reaching audiences leads many of the large advertisers to concentrate their budgets there.”What’s also fueling the spending is that at least one advertiser in each of the major categories is spending big ad dollars, and others in those categories, not wanting to see their market share dwindle, are spending as a defense play. As a result, categories that have traditionally been strongest in fourth quarter, like retail, wireless and movies, among others, are going to drop big dollars into first quarter too as this marketshare duel extends beyond the holiday season. Meanwhile, every major automaker, domestic and foreign, is on broadcast television, where they are attempting to use broadcast’s mass and immediate reach to bring potential customers into the showrooms quickly.Retailers like Target and Sears are spending so as not to let the biggest retail ad spender, Walmart, dominate. And a major ad spending battle is taking place in wireless between Verizon and AT&T. Other active categories include fast-food restaurants and tech, particularly computers and handheld devices.“The heavy levels of fourth-quarter spending was a bit of a surprise to us,” acknowledges one media buyer, who did not want to speak for attribution. “And now the strong fourth-quarter spending is carrying over into first quarter of 2010. Demand is up in first quarter, and with very low cancellations exercised from upfront holds, inventory is tight and pricing is way up.”This is good news for the broadcast networks that held back as much as 15 percent of their advertising inventory in last May’s upfront, hoping for the exact scenario that unfolded as the year came to a close.What has also helped the broadcast networks is they have had some success with new programming that has drawn decent levels of viewing. CBS had winners in new dramas NCIS: Los Angeles and The Good Wife; ABC with freshman drama FlashForward and its new Wednesday night comedy block. Fox has done well with Glee, while The CW enjoyed a solid showing from The Vampire Diaries. Only NBC has struggled with its new shows this season, including its move to put Jay Leno on five nights a week at 10 p.m. But one buyer, who did not want to speak for attribution, says Leno is performing at about the ratings NBC sold it, so there were no overblown expectations.“NBC may have hoped that it would do better, but advertisers are getting the ratings they bought,” the buyer says. “NBC did not sell us a false bill of goods.”Still, NBC needs to get its content house in order, and quickly. “We have supported NBC, but they do need to come up with better content down the road or else eventually they will start to see our investments in their network decline,” says one buyer.Another positive for the broadcast networks is that many advertisers are starting to believe that delayed viewing via DVRs is not as disruptive as originally thought. While media buyers won’t acknowledge that publicly, privately they say that unless an advertiser, say a retailer, needs next-day business, delayed viewing is not the ogre that it was originally thought to be.According to Dave Poltrack, chief research officer at CBS, Nielsen Media Research data shows that DVR playback of broadcast network programs over a seven-day period cumulatively has added 16 percent more total viewers and 25 percent more viewers in the 18-49 demo this season. And cumulative ratings for the broadcast networks in the 18-49 demo for live- plus-three-day viewing (C3), on which upfront buys are based, is down 6 percent this season, not a number that is scaring advertisers away or creating a huge make-good situation for most networks.The strong advertiser demand for scatter ads in Q4 surprised the networks. “We didn’t expect scatter buying to really take off until second quarter of 2010,” says Poltrack. “But it started almost immediately in fourth quarter of 2009.”Poltrack believes every quarter of 2010 will get progressively stronger for the networks and will lead to an overall 5 percent increase in prime-time advertising for the entire year.FORECAST 2010: LOCAL BROADCASTING (TV/RADIO)By Katy BachmanFor the local broadcast business, there is nowhere to go but up in 2010. Pounded in 2009 by the recession, a 30 percent to 40 percent drop in automotive and the continuing encroachment of new media, radio and TV station executives struggled with double-digit revenue declines as they sought out new business models and worked to hold on to their core businesses.Forecasts for both radio and TV tend to be positive, though no one believes either business will return to pre-2008 levels for several years. A number of groups will be climbing out of bankruptcy. Others, such as CBS, Cox Media and NBC are looking to leverage local cross-media platforms to gain efficiencies in a tough ad climate. Ad rates were firming as 2010 approached, but all in all it is likely to remain a buyer’s market. The 2009 drop in TV revenue returned the medium to $15.6 billion, a level not seen since the mid-’90s, according to BIA/Kelsey, which forecasts a 3.2 percent gain in 2010 to $16.1 billion. Local spot TV will grow only 1 percent to 3 percent, while national spot could jump 6 percent to 12 percent, per the Television Bureau of Advertising. “Our projections may be conservative,” says Steve Lanzano, the new president of the TVB. “Going into next year there are some positive signs. We’ve seen upticks in retail and auto, including some major commitments from auto dealers.”If anything could help firm up TV rates in 2010, it is political advertising, which could hit $3.3 billion, an 11 percent increase over 2008. More than 60 percent (or $2.2 billion) of the ad spend will go to local TV, fueled by 37 governor races, 38 Senatorial races, the House of Representatives and issue advertising, which could near $1 billion, per Wachovia Securities. But that may be small comfort to the TV business, which is facing some real threats. TV networks want affiliates to cough up a share of TV stations’ hard-earned retransmission revenue, as much as 50 percent, causing a number of TV execs to dig in their heels. Unless networks can demonstrate a better return from retransmission than TV groups have on their own, it could get messy. Less than a year into the digital TV transition, after broadcasters gave up analog—a quarter of their spectrum—the Federal Communications Commission is floating a proposal to take some of the digital spectrum back. The proposal comes at a time when broadcasters have barely begun to monetize the digital spectrum via side channels and mobile digital broadcast.Stations are cultivating online and mobile revenue in the effort to build new business models. According to BIA/Kelsey, TV stations can expect to ring up about $600 million in online ad revenue in 2010, versus $463 million in ’09. As part of those initiatives, stations are partnering with other local stations to create video news pools and going hyperlocal both online and on-air, trying to find solutions to expensive syndicated programming.“We’re all going to be focused on those other revenue streams,” says Paul Karpowicz, president of Meredith Broadcasting. “You’ll see a lot more emphasis on local programming. In an environment where ratings are scarce, if you can create a format that has sponsorship, product integration elements, that becomes attractive.” In total, all of TV’s additional revenue, including Internet, mobile, digital subchannels and retransmission could account for as much as 13 percent of TV stations’ revenue, with online and retrans representing more than 5 percent each, according to TVB. Radio, coming off the longest slump in its history and its worst year ever, began to pull out of the recession earlier than other local media. Jim Boyle of Gilford Securities, who says the medium was down 7 percent on average over the past three years, forecasts it will grow 6 percent. A less optimistic forecast from BIA/Kelsey puts radio up only 2 percent to $13.7 billion. Magna Global is pessimistic, putting radio down 4.4 percent in 2010 and 0.2 percent in 2011. Prospects look good for national spot radio, up 13.2 percent in December and pacing up 17.4 percent in January, according to Katz Media. Of radio’s top 10 categories, eight are up, including auto, telecom and consumer products, retail, finance/insurance, and fast food.Network radio is also pacing ahead, driven by retailers such as Walmart, Macy’s Kohls, Home Depot and Lowe’s. “Comparisons remain soft, but real dollar growth, improved demand, improved pricing and broad category recovery clearly indicates we are moving in the right direction,” says Stu Olds, president of Katz Media.Like local TV, radio is serious about growing a more robust online revenue stream, currently only about 2 percent of radio revenue, per Borrell Associates. Forecasts vary widely about growth in 2010 with BIA/Kelsey calling for 43 percent growth to $426 million and Borrell forecasting 18 percent growth to $272 million. “Potentially over the next few years, it could become 10 percent of the industry,” says Dan Mason, president and CEO of CBS Radio.Radio’s biggest problem is not the medium, but the business. While the number of listeners holds steady at 235 million weekly listeners, per Arbitron, the business has lacked buzz with advertisers and listeners.“Management continues to cut to the bone. There’s no rate card discipline,” says Boyle. “It’s very hard when account executives are trying to grab budgets.”While some groups have seen programming and talent as costs to be cut, others are looking to programming to help the medium regain its luster. At the end of the year, CBS began to put money back into high-profile programming, signing Carson Daly in Los Angeles and Nick Cannon in New York.“Radio has such a great opportunity to prove the power of local radio,” Mason says. “With iPod and satellite radio fatigue, personalities on popular local radio stations make them relevant.” FORECAST 2010: MEDIA REGULATIONBy Katy BachmanGovernment regulation, a necessary part of the business for any company owning a broadcast license, has never been so active, nor so uncertain, thanks to a media landscape beset by innumerable challenges. TV stations and newspapers are hungry for regulatory relief to own more outlets in local markets as the Federal Communications Commission takes up its ongoing quadrennial review of media ownership rules. Radio stations are once again battling record labels and music artists over proposed performance royalties on music airplay. And wireless companies are itching for more spectrum. Thrown into the mix is the recently announced $30 billion Comcast-NBC Universal merger, which will need regulatory approval from several governmental authorities.But first on the plate of the new Democrat-controlled FCC’s plate is the Internet and broadband. Under chairman Julius Genachowski—a former FCC counsel and President Barack Obama’s former chief technology advisor—the FCC is working overtime to meet Congress’ Feb. 17 deadline for delivering a national broadband plan.While still in development, one proposal in that initiative is already causing some fireworks. In the fall, the FCC’s broadband advisor, Blair Levin, floated a proposal to take back some of TV broadcasters’ digital spectrum in order to solve a looming spectrum crisis feared by wireless companies. To add insult to injury, the FCC also hired professor Benjamin Stuart, whose papers on how to destroy broadcast TV to free up the TV spectrum are making him look like nothing less than a hired gun.Shocking broadcasters, the spectrum proposal came less than a year into the digital TV transition, when broadcasters are at the beginning stages of monetizing the digital spectrum, rolling out side channels and digital TV to mobile devices.Both houses of Congress have bills pending that are intended to survey, inventory and organize the nation’s spectrum. Once the survey is complete, then government regulators say they will have a better idea of how to reallocate or manage the spectrum.“Broadcasting and broadband are not ‘either/or’ propositions as some suggest. It’s a false choice,” says Gordon Smith, president and CEO of the National Association of Broadcasting during his first appearance at a spectrum hearing on Capitol Hill. “Broadcasters spent $10 billion to make the transition. Consumers were promised high-quality TV with new and diverse programming, all free and over the air. If some advocate this be done away with, consumers would realize none of these benefits."At the end of the year, the NAB prepared a 30-second spot for stations to air that touts the benefits of free, over-the-air digital broadcasting. The spot is expected to run through Jan. 14.“We have to do a good job of explaining to the FCC our value and why we’re important to democracy and the American way of life,” says Paul Karpowicz, president of Meredith Broadcasting. “We have to make a solid case. We just did the digital transition, and now there’s discussion about unraveling all the work.”The Comcast-NBCU deal comes at an auspicious time in Washington, D.C., just as the FCC is revving up its quadrennial ownership review. Already, hearings on the merger are being planned in Congress, and public policy organizations have cranked up their lobbying machines, issuing statements and white papers claiming the too-big merger will stifle competition and innovation.While there’s no rule on the books banning common ownership of a TV station and cable system, this could be changed. The merger could also stimulate regulatory discussions of other popular media issues, such as cable a la carte, retransmission consent, children’s programming, and local and public interest programming.Comcast itself it expecting the whole process to take a year and will need a rich war chest to wear down the critics and the skeptics in the nation’s capital ,and to address endless questions from the FCC, the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission. The cable giant is already reaching out to consumers via a TV ad that talks about how the merger will fulfill “big dreams.”The FCC’s quadrennial review of media ownership rules, which were launched last fall via a series of workshops, will touch on other media issues. While radio has enjoyed deregulation since 1996, which ushered in an unprecedented wave of consolidation, TV has had to work around duopoly restrictions that ban ownership of top stations in a market and cross-ownership of stations and newspapers outside the top 20 markets. Broadcasters and newspapers are looking for more latitude, but chairman Genachowski has been mum on the subject.Much to the relief of broadcasters, there seems little appetite for a return to the Fairness Doctrine. But that doesn’t rule out other mandates under the “localism” argument. Ownership diversity—getting more stations in the hands of minorities—is also a likely topic.Radio’s business is threatened by the Performance Rights Act, which would impose a fee on radio stations for music airplay and take a big bite out of radio profits.The bill has passed out of committees in both the House and the Senate, but not made it to either floor for a vote thanks to the NAB’s persistent lobbying efforts, which have managed to hold it off. More than 300 lawmakers, 252 House members and 27 Senators on both sides of the aisle have signed The Local Radio Freedom Act, a nonbinding resolution that denounces any new performance fee, tax, royalty or other charge on radio for music airplay.Despite the numbers on the broadcast side, the proponents refuse to give up and the fight continues.FORECAST 2010: OUT-OF-HOMEBy Janet StilsonIf there’s one word that characterizes the out-of-home industry in 2010, it’s transformation. This year will be when a greater proportion of signs are converted into digital opportunities; a larger quantity of advertisers will see the OOH light; and the entire industry will tap new research that paints a much richer picture of the sector’s value.In general, the out-of-home industry is fairly optimistic. The downer at the end of ‘08, when advertiser cancellations were rife, wasn’t repeated at year’s end 2009. And while it’s still a bit of a “hang on tight and wait for better times” situation, forecasters at Veronis Suhler Stevenson, Magna and ZenithOptimedia expect that the business will reverse course in 2010.Overall, the year-over-year revenue decline that was experienced in 2008 and 2009 probably won’t be replaced by much more than a flat scenario in 2010. Occupancy rates will go up this year, but the pricing still won’t reach 2007 or 2008 levels. But greater expectations are on the horizon. Revenue will rev up in 2011 and 2012 when the category is expected to deliver single-digit annual gains, according to the three firms.Just about everyone in the business agrees that the sector will receive tremendous momentum from new research data emanating from Traffic Audit Bureau’s Eyes On service. “You’ll see more advertisers start to test the [OOH] waters in order to take advantage of the targeted demographics, which they couldn’t do before,” says Damon Peirson, senior vp, director of out-of-home and local print at ZenithOptimedia, regarding Eyes On.The service made an initial splash in 2009 and, as of Jan. 1, became the industry’s primary ratings currency. By spring, most agency planning tools should be integrated into the system, and Eyes On will gain significant traction, according to Stephen Freitas, CMO of the Outdoor Advertising Association of America.But Eyes On also presents some challenges. So far, it doesn’t measure digital boards. And it will take “a year or two” to educate sales people, planners and clients about how to use it, Peirson says.The richer data is one important reason why OOH is transitioning from a medium that’s been used largely as a branding tool to one that can satisfy much more versatile advertiser goals, Peirson says. It comes at a time when OOH digital technology allows for increasingly more creative uses of the medium, such as text messaging and touch-screen interactivity, instantaneous posting of news headlines, and live feeds of events.That versatility is prompting a greater number of ad clients to include the category in their annual budgets, says Norm Chait, Mediavest’s senior vp, director of OOH investment and activation. “It’s given us a seat at the table,” Chait says. “People are being cautious, but the budgets are trending upwards.”At the same time, the number of digital boards is likely to start growing again, after slowing down in 2009. Freitas reports that there are currently about 1,800 digital billboards in the U.S., out of 450,000 total. “The cost of technology is now low enough that companies can invest in less expensive screens,” says Jack Sullivan, senior vp, OOH media at Starcom USA, in explaining why he thinks the number of digital screens will double or triple “in the near future.”Clearly, digital growth is what’s driving the revenue lift for the whole sector. Veronis estimates that between 2008 and 2013, the compound annual growth rate for digital OOH will be 13.2 percent.That compares with a scant 0.3 percent for traditional OOH in that period. Within that static-board sector, billboards are really sluggish, moving from -10.8 percent in 2009 to -2.0 percent in 2010 and +2.5 percent in 2011. The entire OOH sector is expected to clock in at 4.9 percent, according to Veronis’ 2008-2013 CAGR projection. Magna puts its CAGR between 2009 and 2014 at 3.7 percent. The future behavior of different nontraditional OOH categories will vary. In general, video advertising networks will do quite well. Veronis estimates that VANs grew 5.8 percent in 2009 over the prior year, and will steadily increase to 18.1 percent growth by 2013. Among the VANs, cinema ad networks have been quite strong over the last year and will rise even more. Zenith puts cinema growth in ’09 and ’10 at 5 percent, followed by 8 percent in 2011. “Areas like QSR, packaged goods, retail, and believe it or not, auto are all fairly strong,” says Michael Chico, executive vp, sales and marketing at Screenvision, and president of the Cinema Advertising Council.Transit advertising was a little down in 2009, but it’s showing signs of growth, particularly from local vendors, Peirson reports. “A lot of local money is moving away from newspapers,” he explains.Digital place-based OOH “will grow, but it’s growing from nowhere,” Peirson says. “If you take out Walmart and a few of the bigger networks, it still has a ways to go.” The category’s major problem has been scale, he adds. But several companies are consolidating or aggregating the networks, so in the largest markets, place-based is now a viable option, Peirson says.Nondigital place-based, aka ambient, advertising is a modestly growing category, albeit a fairly small source of revenue. But mall advertising is much more promising. “I think the malls will do well in 2010,” says Peirson. “The big mall companies have built out their networks, standardized their signs and can sell national programs in 20 markets. It used to be a hodgepodge.” FORECAST 2010: MEDIA AGENCIESBy Steve McClellan, AdweekMedia shops are bracing for another trying year in 2010. Clients in the U.S. are expected to cut budgets further as the economy improves in fits and starts, and a full recovery remains elusive.That said, media executives for the most part are glad to have 2009 and the worst of the economic meltdown—which traumatized most consumer and marketing sectors—behind them. This year won’t be stellar by any means, but it is expected to be more stable than 2009. Closely watched forecasts reinforce that view. WPP’s GroupM, for example, predicted last month that spending in North America would drop another 4 percent in 2010 to about $150 billion, after a much sharper nearly 8 percent drop-off in 2009 to almost $156 billion. Publicis Groupe’s ZenithOptimedia foresees a similar pattern taking shape, with a spending decline in the region this year of 2.4 percent to $153 billion, much improved from last year’s 12.7 percent plunge to about $157 billion.“In terms of the general environment, it’s still a pretty fragile optimism,” says Lee Doyle, North American CEO of WPP’s Mediaedge:cia. “We’ll latch onto a sign like the surprisingly robust TV scatter market, but boy, we’re sure looking over both shoulders to make sure nothing else is falling apart.” Adds Antony Young, CEO, Publicis Groupe’s Optimedia: “Unemployment will continue to increase ... and many clients are still looking for a flat consumer spending environment. And a number of clients are looking at 2010 being the bottoming out year, as opposed to 2009.” Media agency executives say that key 2010 challenges include leveraging cross-platform executions to the fullest extent. “We need to connect with consumers across channels in a meaningful way,” says Doyle. “We know, for example, that consumers are passionate about certain TV shows because they spend a lot of time in the social media space talking about those shows, and there is a lot of pressure on us to make sure we’re connecting with consumers in both places.”The coming year will also see marketers refocus on growth after a year of keeping their heads above water by cutting costs.“There are not a lot of gains to be made by cutting anymore,” says Young. “Most of the major restructuring has taken place so clients are really looking for their agency to help them improve financial performance. As a result, accountability to business results and strategy have got to be more important. That’s the call out we’re getting from clients.” Agency heads say they are optimistic that the proposed Comcast-NBC Universal merger will provide the spark needed to move forward with a nationwide addressable TV platform after years of industry talk without follow-through. “Addressability has been moving at a snail’s pace, basically because you’ve had people fighting over their share of the pie,” says Doyle. “Now you finally have the guys who own the [delivery] pipe with a significant stake in the content, so this deal could break the logjam.” Lisa Donohue, CEO, Publicis Groupe’s Starcom, agrees, noting that the proposed merger and its implications for ad targetability “are very indicative of where the industry is going.” With its array of distribution and content assets, she says, Comcast-NBCU will generate massive amounts of data across multiple screens. “It’s a very rich merger that has the potential to change the shape of the industry,” she says.Data management remains a key issue and execs say that increasingly Internet-generated data is being used to inform both on- and offline media plans. “We’ve traditionally gone out and developed original research to support consumer insights,” says Doyle. But increasingly, he says, “we’re asking ourselves if we’ve really leveraged that data that’s out there, particularly social media conversations about products. When you’re picking up 15,000 conversations a week about a brand and you see a predominant sentiment” that’s a pretty good indicator of what people are thinking, he says.And 2010 could be a do-or-die year for the beleaguered print industry, many executives say, noting that e-readers may just be the portable, graphics-friendly platform that saves the medium from oblivion. One pivotal question, however, is whether the industry can agree on a set of universal standards so that the devices could access numerous publications. “It’s very difficult to get a client excited about advertising in any magazine or newspaper,” says Steve Farella, CEO, at New York-based independent media shop TargetCast:tcm. “We kind of need to resuscitate the value of print and find out what its role is moving forward, and figure out how it’s going to be digitized in a high-value way.” Young agrees, noting that roughly 65 percent of the cost of a print product goes to paper, ink and distribution. And the related but broader issue of subscriber walls—and what consumers are willing to pay for—will also take center stage this year, “It’s about survival,” says Young.As media owners contemplate future business models, media agencies have to remain “agile and fluid organizations,” adds Donohue. “Job one is realizing there is no going back to so-called normal times, there is only going forward and understanding what the ‘new normal’ is,” he says. “And then moving quickly to solutions and getting those solutions into the marketplace.” FORECAST 2010: AUTOMOTIVE AD CATEGORYBy Noreen O'Leary, AdweekIt’s one of life’s indelible truisms that the only good thing about hitting rock bottom is that there’s no place else to go but up. And it looks like—hopefully—that maxim will apply to auto advertising for 2010 and beyond.Just in case 2009 wasn’t rock bottom, it had to be damn close: Ad spending skidded to a halt with antilock-brake efficiency, falling 31 percent in the first half of the year alone. Meanwhile, two Detroit behemoths sputtered into the ditch of bankruptcy. In terms of sales, it was the worst time since WWII—and back then, coincidentally or not, the Big Three were making bombs, not family sedans.Now that the worst seems to be over, ad spending is expect to inch up—by at least 4 percent across all media, according to Borrell Associates, Williamsburg, Va. Still, good news is relative these days. The $19 billion spending level forecast for 2010 is nonetheless a significant drop from levels seen as recently as 2008, when marketers ponied up $22 billion to get consumers into auto showrooms.Industry watchers say that TV will continue to attract the lion’s share of spending this year. Borrell projects an increase of 1.9 percent to $5.3 billion. Remember, though, broadcast TV got hammered in 2009. New-vehicle ad spending on the medium dropped by 23 percent, to $5.2 billion. The current sluggish growth in the economy will probably do little to return broadcasters to the Cadillac spending levels of 2008, when auto marketers dropped $6.7 billion to get their ads on the tube.Online, of course, is another world entirely—and experts say it’s where the real growth is going to happen. Sure, Web-based advertising did tap the brakes last year—slowing to a relatively anemic 5.2 percent growth—but 2010 should see all the cylinders firing once again. Borrell expects the medium to grow by an 11.4 percent clip, to $4.3 billion. If that happens, the Web will become the industry’s second-largest spending category (laurels that, until 2008, belonged to newspapers.)None of this comes as a surprise to John McDonald, a spokesperson for GM. “Customers are driving the ad spend shifts,” he says. “GM ad spending will continue to be reflective of where customers are spending their time-and that is increasingly in the digital and social media spaces and less in traditional media.”Ditto for Toyota. Tim Morrison, the corporate manager for marketing communications for Toyota Motor Sales, USA, confirms that the brand “will be putting an increased emphasis on social media.” Marketers like Volkswagen of America, which boasts 280,000 Facebook friends, showed the potential use of such media when it launched its latest version of the GTI last fall. It was the first car model ever launched solely on the marketing support of mobile devices like the iPhone and iPod Touch. The free ‘Real Racing GTI’ app was actively promoted on the automaker’s Facebook page and at VW.com.Borrell adds that this year, the growth in online ad spending will be driven by e-mail, social networking and, especially, streaming audio and video campaigns. Larry Shaw, the consultancy’s director of client research, says that while revenue from Internet display, banners, pop-ups and classifieds dropped by 20 percent last year, better-targeted digital media like e-mail and social grew by the same amount. Shaw believes that 2010 will be the “breakout” year for streaming audio and video advertising, which he maintains will grow by a staggering 145 percent, generating $1.1 billion. (As recently as 2008, this stripe of e-vertising generated only $440 million.)The big loser in all of this, of course, continues to be American newspapers. Historically, the broadsheet was auto advertising’s sacred ground. A decade ago, newspapers rang up $9.9 billion worth of new-car ads. Last year, newsprint took a broadside of 28.5 percent, ad revenues dropping to $3.4 billion. And while Borrell forecasts a 3.8 percent hike for newspapers (which would nudge the take to $3.5 billion for 2010), it’s clear that change is here to stay. According to a recent study by Northwood University and AutoTrader.com, some 54 percent of respondents cited the Internet as the primary media source that led them to a particular dealership. It looks like the Web drives up to four times as many pairs of feet onto the dealership carpets as newspapers used to. “The Internet has become the key driver of walk-in traffic to dealer showrooms,” confirms Northwood’s vp of strategy and corporate alliances Timothy Nash.Just don’t write the obit for traditional media yet, especially the old tube in the living room. The U.S. auto industry is expected to make 49 product introductions in 2010, according to J.D. Power & Associates, followed by 75 in 2011 and 56 in 2012 for a total of 180 new models. “TV is still critical in new model launches and that bodes well for future TV spending,” says Power’s vp of marketing and media solutions Gene Cameron. “In the six months prior to buying a car, shoppers only shop for 2.9 models. Marketers need more than ever to get on that consideration set and TV helps do that.”Cameron explains that 76 percent of all new vehicle buyers now shop for cars by going online, with one-third of them hitting the Web six months out in the buying process. As they narrow down their choices and reach the three-month distance from purchase, a whopping 70 percent of car buyers head for the Internet. Nonetheless, TV still helps to generate initial awareness well enough that it remains an integral part of expanded-media strategy. Just ask VW of America, preparing to launch its new Jetta.According to marketing general manager Brian Thomas, while digital is becoming a “transformational’ force at the automaker, TV will be a still be big factor for such a mass product. “For us, social media is a key component,” he says. “Mobile media, on-demand TV—all will be actively used in our marketing but TV will also be strong. What’s critical is that all this media work symbiotically.” FORECAST 2010: CONSUMER PACKAGED GOODS AD CATEGORYBy Elaine Wong, BrandweekConsumers cut back on a lot of things during an economic downturn, but they can only reduce their consumption of food and household products so much. So it’s not surprising that food marketers and makers of products like laundry detergents and underarm deodorant aren't reeling as much as the auto industry.That's not to say things have gone swimmingly in the consumer packaged goods sector—private label has taken a bite out of various categories as shoppers attempted to cut their grocery bills. But since the economy has rebounded a bit and many of the companies—particularly those peddling food—are planning to shovel some cash back into advertising in 2010. That’s a nice change over 2009, when spending in the segment was flat or slightly down, according to the Nielsen Co. At least that’s what companies in the segment have told Wall Street analysts. In a Consumer Staples Issues & Outlook compiled by Goldman Sachs, analysts Judy Hong, Andrew Sawyer, Michael Kelter and Lindsay Drucker Mann predict higher advertising spending from companies like Procter & Gamble and PepsiCo. “We expect increases in spending levels in 2010 despite media cost deflation as the companies seek to reinvigorate unit volume,” the analysts wrote in the report. “We highlight the potential impact that large competitors [like P&G and PepsiCo may have] as each may become more aggressive in order to arrest multi-year market share declines.” Translation: Even though CPMs are generally down, overall spends will jump as the big players in the category attempt to undue the damage wrought by the recession.P&G, under its new CEO, Robert McDonald, in particular, is spending more on beauty and fabric care innovations. Most of these launches are slated for the back half, or April-June timeframe (the company’s fiscal year begins July 1). But it's already rolled out a series of new products, like Bounce Dryer Bar and Tide Stain Release, in the last few months. The Cincinnati-based maker of such megabrands like Charmin and Tide last month also purchased the air-freshener unit of Sara Lee, Ambi Pur, for $470 million, a sign that the company is in growth mode.Kimberly-Clark, meanwhile, increased spending by $50 million alone in its latest (third) quarter. K-C, which makes Kleenex tissues and Viva paper towels, lost sales volume to cheaper-priced brands in the recession, but it still sees upside in new product innovations, including new personal care launches planned for later this year.“We are media agnostic,” global media director Mark Kaline explained in an e-mail discussing the company’s media plan. “The best channel mix to reach our consumers and deliver on our brand objectives is what we will deploy.“ Not everyone plans to increase ad spending. Clorox is shifting more ad dollars to trade spending to address price gaps and private label and competitor activity in its bleach and Glad trash bags businesses, among others. Consequently, full-year ad spending will still be “in the 9 to 10 percent [of revenues] range,” though total ad spend “will be about the same,” because of the emphasis on trade advertising, CFO Dan Heinrich told analysts.Food marketers, who have by and large benefitted from the recession-driven, eat-at-home trend, have built up a robust new product pipeline. Spending to court newly frugal, restaurant-shunning consumers is expected to follow. New food launches accounted for 10 to 20 percent of sales at the major food companies in 2009, and the momentum is expected to “carry over” in 2010, wrote Citi Investment Research analyst David Driscoll in a recent report.Food firms like Kellogg, Campbell Soup and Kraft, for instance, are expected to increase spending in 2010, and “total advertising impressions will rise by double digits” this year, he wrote. Much of that advertising will focus on new or existing products that are “at the center of the plate” or offer consumers a strong value proposition, such as Del Monte Foods’ canned fruits and vegetables business. (Last April, Del Monte Foods began advertising that business for the first time in 10 years, under a campaign called “Stretch your dollar.”)Campbell, for instance, has seen its soups and broths benefit from the trend of consumers dining at home. Premium-priced products from the company such as Pepperidge Farm cookies and microwaveable soups, however, have seen sluggish sales, though CEO Douglas Conant has said there is “opportunity [to position microwaveable soups] as the ultimate brown bag lunch.” ConAgra Foods, meanwhile, upped ad spending by $24 million, or 25 percent, in its second quarter ended Nov. 29; General Mills' measured media spending was up 37 percent in its latest quarter; and Kellogg increased spending by 17 percent versus the year ago period in its third quarter.So why are food companies letting loose their marketing purse strings?Driscoll, the Citi analyst, said food makers are taking advantage of lower media rates to boost advertising impressions and attract new consumers. His outlook for the sector is “sunny” this year as “easing pressure from commodities, foreign exchange and private label” is likely to benefit food companies. In fact, branded food makers are gaining dollar market share against private label for the first time in three years, and advertising—and a slew of new product innovations—plays no small role in that, he said. FORECAST 2010: TELECOM AD CATEGORYBy Todd Wasserman, BrandweekNot to get all philosophical about it, but what is telecom anyway? Now that cable companies offer phone service and firms previously known as phone companies offer TV and many people are using their mobile devices more as mini computers than phones, the question is worth asking. To consider what a moving target telecom is, just look at how it has morphed over the past decade. At this point in 2000, the pre-WorldCom MCI was running ads touting long-distance. Dial-around services, which let consumers save money by bypassing their primary long-distance carriers, were hot. Verizon wasn’t even around yet. Almost no one texted. AT&T was a stumbling giant.OK, maybe things didn’t change that much in AT&T’s case, but overall, the telecom industry in 2010 bears little resemblance to the one at the turn of the century or even 2005. Will the pace of change slacken by, say, 2015? Don’t bet on it.“The industry transforms itself every five years,” says Jeffrey Kagan, an independent telecom analyst in Atlanta. For instance, the smart-phone category had been sluggish for most of the decade, hovering at around 5-10 percent until Apple jumped in in 2007 with the iPhone. Now it’s around 50 percent. Some time soon, there will be more smart phones out there than dumb ones.The industry’s constant reinvention—plus a decade-long evolution in which the cell phone morphed from a luxury to necessity—fueled yearly increases in advertising spending. That is, until the recession hit. Ad spending fell from $4.91 billion in 2007 to $4.87 billion in 2008, according to Nielsen data, which doesn’t count online advertising spending. While full-year 2009 figures aren’t in yet, they appear to be on a downward trend from 2008. “Even though telecom has weathered the storm well, they are cutting jobs and all their expenses. They’re focused on [cutting] things they’ve never considered—including advertising,” Kagan says. The economy wasn’t bad for everyone. Boost Mobile, a unit of Sprint, had a huge success with a $50 all-you-can-eat plan it introduced in the beginning of the year and added more than 1 million new subscribers in 2009. Bob Stohrer, vp-marketing for Sprint Prepaid Group, observes that about half of the customers up for grabs are in the prepaid category, which was previously marketed mostly to teens and the credit-challenged. “There’s significant growth,” he says. “The economy is a catalyst.” Stohrer says his research shows that only about 20 percent of customers aren’t open to prepaid, about half the number two years ago. If Stohrer’s data is accurate, that means consumers are trading down, and prepaid’s growth isn’t coming from cell phone virgins. That jibes with research from the CTIA showing that pretty much everyone in the U.S. who wants a cell phone has one. According to the CTIA, there were 276.6 million wireless subscribers in 2009. If you consider that there are about 305 million people in the U.S., that’s means roughly 91 percent of Americans of all ages have a cell phone. So while there are still areas of untapped growth, telecoms are no longer competing in an ever-expanding category as they did through much of the 2000s. “It’s Pepsi versus Coke—four guys slugging it out,” says Roger Entner, Nielsen’s head of telecom research.That explains the big telecom ad skirmish of ’09. Remember Verizon’s claim that AT&T offered scant smart phone coverage in much of the U.S.? That ad prompted a since-withdrawn lawsuit by AT&T, which then decided to call Luke Wilson in to challenge the claim via TV ads. Verizon was also behind a pugnacious campaign for Motorola’s Droid, a smart phone based on Google’s Android operating system, that called out Apple’s iPhone for its lack of functionality and, in one spot, its girly resemblance to a beauty queen. With Google, Apple, Mozilla and Microsoft eyeing the smart-phone market, you can expect the war of words to continue in 2010. The wild card in all this is Apple, which is heavily rumored to be considering offering its iPhone on Verizon. In fact, some speculate that Verizon’s latest round of anti-iPhone advertising is designed to stoke already-heavy dissension in the ranks among AT&T subscribers. Another possible game-changer is Apple’s rumored tablet PC, (said to be called the iSlate), which could be a further boon to wireless data services. Such data services grew 31 percent in the first half of 2009 versus the same period in 2008, according to the CTIA. A lot of that business came from smart phones, but about 10 million people are currently logging onto the Internet with their laptops via wireless.While the wireless Internet has its pitfalls—AT&T’s network, for one, has struggled under the weight of heavy iPhone users—it represents a new opportunity in a business where average user’s monthly bill has been flat for the past few years and where competition keeps driving the price of minutes ever downward.The growth of smart phones and other wireless devices opens up other new expansion opportunities, like mobile TV, that would in turn create new reasons for telecoms to advertise their services. As has been the case for many years, the land-line side presents a less promising picture for advertising growth. The telecoms are vying fiercely with cable companies over broadband and TV service, but since installment of those services tends to be town-by-town, marketing relies on media like direct mail over national TV buys.Then again, broadband and wireless have kind of eliminated what we used to call national TV, anyway. FORECAST 2010: STUDIOS/ENTERTAINMENT AD CATEGORYBy T.L. StanleyThe Great Recession raged on, but Hollywood had just the cure for our collective ills this past year. Need a pick-me-up? See the inspirational football tale, The Blind Side. Looking for a belly laugh? How about the bachelor party bacchanal, The Hangover? Need your eardrums pierced and your brain scrambled? Right this way to Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.Penny-pinching consumers, tight-fisted even at the grocery store, shelled out $10 or more per movie ticket to escape the gloom and doom of the economy. The result: a record-busting domestic box office that topped $10 billion (and counting) for the first time. And, in an even better barometer of success, attendance increased nearly 9 percent after a decade of decreases or flatlines. So, it wasn’t just all those 3D flicks like Avatar and their premium price tags that bumped up the bottom line, there were actually more butts in seats.There’s been plenty of crowing, but it’s no time to relax, say analysts and industry watchers. In fact, Hollywood is under serious pressure from double-digit drops in DVD revenue, escalating production and overhead costs and big-budget flops (Land of the Lost, anyone?). In response, execs have trimmed the number of movies they release, ended those $25 million upfront paydays to A-list talent and pulled the plug on expensive gambles (see: Disney recently scuttles the $150-million Captain Nemo). Meanwhile, cable giant Comcast’s deal to take control of NBC Universal could remake the Hollywood landscape.Movie marketing budgets, one of the last sacred cows, are sure to get put under the microscope in 2010.“Hollywood spends like the pharmaceutical companies on marketing,” says Larry Gerbrandt, entertainment analyst and principal at Media Valuation Partners. “Studios are going to have to show a lot more discipline going forward.”That may be tough, considering a packed roster that includes Iron Man 2, an updated Clash of the Titans, videogame-based Prince of Persia, Tim Burton’s version of Alice in Wonderland starring Johnny Depp, Sex & the City 2, and new installments of blockbuster franchises like Shrek, Twilight, Chronicles of Narnia, Harry Potter and Toy Story.The average cost to market a studio film was $36 million in 2007, the most recent year the figures are available from the Motion Picture Association of America. The trade group has since stopped releasing the estimates, saying it was nearly impossible to gather reliable data. Analysts say costs have continued to spiral, mostly due to expensive network television time.The key will be “making movies for a price, and marketing them for a price,” says Kevin Goetz, president of the worldwide motion picture group at market research firm OTX. In other words, expect more ultra-low-budget movies like Paranormal Activity and on-the-cheap guerrilla tactics that turned it into a runaway hit. (Its distributor, Paramount Pictures, recently launched an initiative to develop movies with budgets under $100,000). “If studio marketers aren’t analyzing every penny, they’re not doing their jobs,” says Mike Vollman, executive vp marketing, MGM Worldwide, who’s taking advantage of the hubbub around MTV’s reality show, Jersey Shore, to advertise his raunchy comedy, Hot Tub Time Machine. “We are on the verge of lots of change.”Mega-budget films—Avatar director James Cameron has says he wants to make two sequels—will rely heavily on promotional partners for media boosts while devoting major coin to splashy campaigns. Still, “we won’t see ego spending,” Gerbrandt says.Television will continue to make up the lion’s share, especially for broad-based films because the goal is mass awareness. Print’s on life support, and radio and outdoor will take only a small sliver of the pie. Digital, which Goetz and others believe is still an underused medium, will flourish.“You can go to Facebook, MySpace, mommy blogs, niche audiences within the Internet community,” says Mark Pogachefsky, president of public relations and marketing firm mPRm, which works with independent distributors like Focus Features and Summit Entertainment. “You could open a movie today and make a lot of money without ever advertising in the The New York Times or The L.A. Times, and maybe without TV. You can go directly to your audience.”One controversial way that studios could save money is to shorten the time between the theatrical and DVD releases, referred to as “collapsing the windows,” meaning there’d be one marketing budget to cover both launches a month or two apart. Theater owners are dead set against the idea—they fear it’ll cannibalize their business—but the economics may dictate it.No one in the industry is predicting a significant drop in overall spending, but, as Pogachefsky says, “it’ll be a matter of shaving,” with studios buying half- instead of full-page print ads, late night instead of prime-time TV, a handful of spots instead of a barrage in order to make their money go further.If there’s anything Hollywood has learned lately, it’s that word of mouth has never been more important for boosting (or killing) a movie. By the time the lights come up at the multiplex on Friday night, moviegoers have already tapped out reviews on their BlackBerrys or cellphones. For that reason, studios will reach out more aggressively to Facebook and Twitter users with significant followings, looking for evangelists. “Years ago, you could fool people into believing your product was worth spending money on,” Vollman says. “Now, in a Twitter world, you can’t do that anymore.”FORECAST 2010: PHARMACEUTICAL AD CATEGORYBy Jim EdwardsTwo events taking shape right now will dominate the pharmaceutical marketing agenda for 2010—and (surprise) both are coming straight out of Washington.First, the FDA’s inquiry into drug marketing on the Internet has the potential to sway marketing-spend apportionments between traditional media and online. Second, President Obama’s healthcare-reform plan—assuming it emerges intact from conference committee—has the potential to deliver over 30 million new customers that drug companies will, of course, want to advertise to.At the heart of the inquiry that the FDA is currently conducting is whether there should be new guidelines that may make it easier for drug companies to advertise online. Currently, drug manufacturers are required to balance any claim they make in their advertising with a recitation of the drug’s side effects. But in some online venues—most notably Twitter’s 140-character tweets—it is impossible to do that. In April the FDA cited 14 drug companies under those rules for improperly using Google ads, another platform which offers only a dozen or so words for advertisers to use. After the agency fired off warning letters to makers including Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson and Bayer, use of Google ads by drug companies dropped by 84 percent, according to comScore.One question that marketers hope the FDA will answer is whether Google’s proposed new drug-ad format—developed in response to the FDA’s actions—is acceptable. That format utilizes the name of the drug as the hotlink, a line describing the drug’s claims, and then a line under that for warnings. The full information is one click away. If that arrangement proves acceptable, expect marketers to rush back into the online space.“I think they [the FDA] were impressed with Google’s data,” says Bruce Grant, senior vp/business development at Digitas Health. “The door is open within FDA to considering whether or not there might be some adequate provision, or a “one-click rule,” that takes into account the specific limitations of the internet.”Drug marketers are also keeping a cautious eye on the sweeping health-care reform bills passed by the House and Senate. But even if reform passes, it will be months (in some cases, years) before the new system starts gathering uninsured patients into the system. Nonetheless, Big Pharma will no doubt regard these masses of Americans as a new marketing opportunity. It’s also a group the industry, relatively speaking, knows nothing about.The last time the pharmaceutical industry got a payload of new customers dumped on its lap was back in 2005, when Congress passed prescription-drug reform that expanded Medicare Part D coverage. But in that case, drug makers had a good idea of who their customers were: All were 65 and over. But uninsured Americans will come from all demographics and be covered by a patchwork of plans. Expect to see a big demand for new market research projects from clients hoping to target them.In terms of overall direct-to-consumer advertising, don’t expect to see a return to the glory days just because the economy is recovering. Pharma is still contending with the patent expiration of many of its blockbuster drugs. Pfizer’s Lipitor, the best-selling drug of all time with up to $13 billion in revenues, is expected to lose its legal exclusivity in 2010. Its revenues are already in decline. Once it faces cheap generic rivals, the brand’s revenues will no doubt crash and Pfizer’s will be unable to sustain its previous ad budget. Indeed, that’s already happening across the drug business: Shire's Adderall (for ADHD) and Cephalon's Provigil (for sleep disorders) will lose exclusivity in 2015; about 120 more brands will fall in 2010, according to DrugPatentWatch.com.As each brand disappears, it puts increasing pressure on the remaining brands to maximize their revenues. Thus some old stalwarts are seeing new attention and ad dollars from marketers. AstraZeneca, for instance, started running new TV ads for its antipsychotic Seroquel this year, and Pfizer will keep its foot to the floor on Viagra for two more years (the company switched creative duties on the brand to Dentsu’s McGarryBowen in October).Expect to see more brands abandon TV for online-only campaigns, both for political reasons and because the business is rapidly concluding that DTC just isn’t as effective as once thought. “When in doubt, DTC will be cut,” says Jay Carter, senior vp/ director of client services at AbelsonTaylor in Chicago, Ill. “It causes too much heat in an environment that is already uncomfortable.”The drug industry is also shifting away from the longstanding model in which its marquee drug becomes a household name. Companies increasingly desire broader portfolios make of smaller drugs that target specialized conditions. It follows that general-audience ad campaigns will become less relevant, ceding their places to specialized efforts-especially online ones.“There will be more money spent by pharmas in online marketing than in years past,” says Jay Bigelow, president of MicroMass Communications in Cary, N.C. “Compared to their TV budgets it’s still a fraction. There are so many brands that will do online that will never do broadcast media. So the growth will be in online spending.” MicroMass’s clients include Merck, Novartis, and Shire. “The fringe brands that probably shouldn’t have been in there in the first place aren’t going back.”In over-the-counter medicine category, expect marketers to continue jockeying for position based on news and FDA action. Last year, Tylenol suffered after an FDA panel recommended patients take lower doses of acetaminophen. This year, Bayer’s aspirin brand may take some hits from Pfizer’s Advil as a new study suggests that it does not have all the stroke-damage preventing properties once thought.

Brand Marketing

Analysis: Media Forecast 2010

Adweek Staff

About

Subscriptions

Events

Publications

WORK SMARTER - LEARN, GROW AND BE INSPIRED.

Subscribe today!

Adweek Staff