Media Sales Today

It looks like the pharmaceutical industry is still spending ad dollars inside magazines — at least in the ones still publishing. Despite legislative pressures and rumors of the hammer coming down on the tax deduction on ad expenses for prescription drugs, big pharma appears to have a soft spot for print. According to the Publishers Information Bureau, from 2003-2008, drugs & remedies in consumer magazines soared 58% to $2.2 billion, ranking it No. 2 behind toiletries & cosmetics.

Break out the party hats and horns! Cable TV ad spending was up 1.5% through the first six months of 2009. Nielsen numbers through the first quarter showed cable ad spending was down 2.7%, which means second quarter showed a marked improvement.

Amid small-town gossip, rumor mills in motion and nosy nay-sayers, the dust swirled and then cleared for a new media measurement team to ride its horse into town yesterday. The new kid in town is the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement — and this kid’s posse includes 14 of the most-wanted broadcast networks, media buyers and advertisers. Ad Town is in a tizzy and I was wondering how you feel about it.

While we’ve seen bad numbers across the board for 2009, many are hopeful a recovery is starting. The Television Bureau of Advertising is predicting better numbers for spot TV in 2010.

The Newspaper Association of America release Q2 newspaper ad revenue numbers last week. And in case you missed them, here’s the news: revenue was down again, for the 12th straight quarter.

Interactive is the future — according to recent Forrester Research, anyway. Forrester talked with marketers about their budgets for the years 2009 through 2014, and most — 60% — are shifting funds from traditional media to interactive. According toDirectmag.com, “Direct mail was cited by 40% of marketers as 1 being cut, outranking newspapers (35%), magazines (28%) and TV (12%).”

I ran across an Advertising Age article which — unfortunately — purports that realtors and realty agencies are making a mass exodus from newspapers and flocking to the Internet … permanently. Ugh.