P&G STILL NATION’S BIGGEST ADVERTISER

Total U.S. ad spending was down 4.0% in the first quarter of this year, as tallied by Kantar Media—and total television spending was pretty much in line with that, down 3%. Some of that, of course, was due to not having the Winter Olympics on NBC this year, which impacted both Network and Spot TV totals. Excluding the impact of the Olympics and political, Kantar said core U.S. ad spending was down 2.0%.

One bright spot was U.S. Spanish Television, for which Kantar includes 5 Hispanic broadcast networks, 5 cable networks and 80 local TV stations. It shot up 4.8% in Q1. “The number of national brands purchasing time on Hispanic stations continues to expand and this demand contributes to spending growth,” said Kantar. On the English side, Network TV was down 9.2%, Spot TV 6.8% and Syndication 4.9%. Cable TV Networks were up 4.1%.

Kantar is still limited in its ability to count digital media. It added Paid Search this time, showing it up 7.0%, while Online Display (PC only, not mobile) was down 8.7%. Newspapers had another tough quarter, with print ads down 15.4%. Radio was close to flat, down 0.1%, and Outdoor rose 2.9%.

Procter & Gamble, which has stated that it is shifting traditional media dollars to digital, was still the biggest advertiser at $570.9 million, although that was down 24.5% from a year ago. Comcast moved up to second at $464.8 million, up 10.4%. General Motors fell to third with Q1 ad buys down 30.8% to $411.4 million. AT&T dropped 24.6% to $404.6 million and Pfizer rounded out the top five at $400.8 million, up 13.1%.

The biggest increase in ad buying in the top 10 was by Deutsche Telekom for its T-Mobile subsidiary. It increased advertising 34.8% to $269.8 million.

By sector, auto was still #1, but down 11.0% to $3.35 billion. Retail was down 9.6% to $3.09 billion. Insurance declined 8.9% to $1.53 billion.