Advertising advertising

Today's New York Times boasted a special advertising section promoting the upfront TV advertising season, with many gushing plaudits of the effectiveness of TV advertising. But the very fact that TV and cable networks are taking out massive print ads promoting their medium speaks volumes about that business -- and the news isn't good.

The bottom line: TV advertising is getting more expensive to reach a smaller audience. And overall, we are starting to see data that indicates that US companies in general are dedicating a smaller percentage of their marketing budgets to advertising and devoting the dollars freed up to other more measurable marketing media such as direct or Web marketing. For example, in Q4 2004, advertising was more than 30% of marketing budgets. In Q1 2005, it averaged 24%. That's a huge change.

For anyone interested in getting more data on marketing activity budgets, attitudes, and spending, you can pre-order our Q2 report, "Marketing 2005: Q2 Marketing By Industry" at our eStore here. We'll also be releasing in June a new report titled "Sizing US Marketing" that projects both the size and breakdown of US Marketing activity in 2005. Don't miss that -- how often do you get to participate in a market whose size is in excess of $1.0 trillion (yes, that's Trillion with a T)?