NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Nielsen has released its ad-spending numbers for the first half of 2006 and Spanish-language TV is one of the biggest winners.
Hispanic Marketing
Ad Dollars Continue to Pour Into Internet, Spanish-Language TV
Overall U.S. Ad Spending up 5.1% for First-Half 2006
Marketers spent $1.5 billion on Spanish-language TV and $3.8 billion on the web in the first half of 2006.
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Marketers spent $1.5 billion on Spanish-language TV and $3.8 billion on the web in the first half of 2006.
Spending on Spanish-language TV rose by 21.8%, or $270 million, over the same period last year, according to preliminary figures released by Nielsen Monitor-Plus. Total Spanish-language spending during the first half of 2006 was $1.5 billion.
$3.2 billion
Meanwhile, overall total U.S. ad spending rose by 5.1%, or $3.2 billion, Nielsen reported. Total dollars spent on media added up to $65.8 billion.
Nielsen largely attributed the increase in Spanish-language TV ad spending to June's World Cup coverage.
While TNS Media Intelligence, another company that tracks ad spending, isn't releasing its first-half figures until Sept. 6, Jon Swallen, senior VP-research, TNS Media International, said Spanish TV ad spending and ad time have been up by double-digit percentage gains every month since September 2005.
"Even though the Cup event was limited to June-July, it seems that many advertisers bought ad time in other parts of the broadcast season as part of their Cup packages," he said.
Web sees biggest boost
But Spanish-language TV ad spending grew half as fast as internet ad spending since last year at this time. The web saw the largest increase in ad spending, a 49%, or $1.2 billion, change. Total internet spending the first half of this year was $3.8 billion.
The most money, though, was spent on network TV, where advertisers dropped more than $12 billion. But is only a 6.3% increase from last year at this time.
The highest-spending advertiser was General Motors Corp. In spite of a 3% decrease in spending, the automotive giant spent $1.71 billion. That's nearly the amount marketers spent on outdoor ads and nearly twice the amount marketers spent on national newspaper ads in the first six month of 2006. The automotive category also spent the more than any other sector with $6.77 billion.
AT&T spending spike
But while AT&T was the fourth-largest spender, its spending rose a dramatic 51% from the same period last year. Ad Age reported in March that AT&T Corp., previously SBC Communications, is in the midst of washing away the SBC name with an ad campaign estimated at $1 billion.
While ad spending is up, product placement is down. Product placement occurrences in the top 10 product-placement programs on network TV in the first half of '06 totaled 14,643 occurrences, down from 23,518 occurrences counted by Nielsen in the year-ago period.
