Global Ad Spend Down 7% in Q109
Source: The Nelson Company
Global advertising expenditures across television, newspapers, magazines and radio dropped 7.2% during the the first quarter of 2009 vs. the same period in 2008. The “Global AdView Pulse” report reveals that the worldwide economic crisis is taking its toll on the ad sector and is affecting, to varying extents, every region of the world, every type of media and nearly every industry Nielsen tracks.

Ad Spend By Region

Though North America suffered the largest raw percentage decline of any region (-12.4%) with ad spend down 12.7% in the US, Nielsen said that Europe took the hardest hit overall during Q1, especially the individual countries of Spain (-28.2%), Ireland (-21.2%), Italy (-19.1%) and the UK (-14.7%).

“The effects of the global financial crisis have certainly caught up with the ad sector in this latest quarter, especially in North America and Europe where virtually all of the territories we reported on recorded negative growth,” said Global AdView Managing Director, Ben van der Werf. “Even China, which usually sees a boost during Chinese New Year, posted subdued growth for the quarter of just 2.5% off the back of 17.1% growth in quarter four of 2008.”

Results by Media Type
The Nielsen report shows that advertising across all four traditional major media types (newspapers, TV, magazines and radio) was down in the quarter. Magazines fared the worst, down 17.4%, while newspapers saw a 9.1% decline.