... a product of the imagination.

But with $3.25 million in initial financing from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, change is afoot.

Mr Kaplan will join the Lear Center's director of research, Johanna Blakley, as a principal “investigator” for the new enterprise.

Kaplan spoke last week about the futility of counting page-views, “likes,” and retweets when trying to figure out whether an opinion piece, a documentary film or a television show actually moved anyone.

“Those measure how many people saw something,” he said. “That’s not the same as an outcome.”

Read the original unabridged New York Times article.

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

... the health of the global economy, particularly in relation to the Eurozone debt crisis.

Despite which WARC expects global advertising spend (based on twelve major markets) to increase by +3.0% at current prices in 2013 and by +5.4% in 2014, according to its latest International Ad Forecast.

With the exceptions of Brazil and Japan, all featured markets have seen downgrades to their forecasts for 2013 compared with WARC's November 2012  report.

The Eurozone countries will all see flat or negative growth in advertising spemajor political or sportind for 2013.

Comments WARC's Data and Journals Director Suzy Young: "With few major political or sporting events this year, global advertising spend growth was always expected to be slower than in 2012. The Eurozone debt crisis also continues to depress growth both among member countries and abroad. To offset this, global adspend will be reliant on a solid performance from the US and strong growth from emerging markets."

Read the original unabridged WARC article.

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

... climb at a similar pace throughout eMarketer’s forecast period, which extends through 2016. By that year, eMarketer forecasts, worldwide ad spending will top $628 billion.

The fastest growth during the forecast period will come from Latin America, where ad spending is up 11% this year to $34.66 billion. By 2016, ad spending in Latin America will reach $51.33 billion.

Asia-Pacific, Eastern Europe and the Middle East and Africa will also enjoy higher-than-average growth rates, while growth in North America and Western Europe will be significantly slower.

This year, Western Europe has struggled to grow ad spending at all, with several major countries posting spending declines.

Japan is the world's second largest nation in terms of ad spending,al though China is hard on its heels and set to surpass it in 2014.

Moreover, China, the third-largest ad market in the world, is growing much more quickly in terms of adspend than mature markets like the US or Japan.

eMarketer estimates ad spending in China is up 13% this year, slightly higher than Warc’s November 2012 projection of 11.5% growth.

Research firms that predicted significantly higher growth rates tended to make those forecasts earlier in 2012, when overall economic prognostications for China were more favorable. Nonetheless, eMarketer predicts double-digit ad spend growth rates in this massive country through the rest of the forecast period, which will help boost Asia-Pacific (and worldwide) increases.

Read the original unabridged eMarketer article.

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

... global adspend in 2013 will increase 5.3% compared to 2012, representing $533.2bn.

The revised spending forecast was made in GroupM’s biannual worldwide report, This Year, Next Year, which also said that 2011 advertising spending in measured media hit $482 billion, a 5% increase versus the 2010 figure of $459bn. 

For the US market, the report predicts that advertising investment in measured media will grow 3.6% in 2012 to a total of $152.5bn, down from the 4% growth projected in the previous report issued in December 2011.

For 2013, the new report predicts a 3.1% increase, representing a total spend of $157.2 bn.

Says GroupM Chief Investment Officer Rino Scanzoni: "We attribute the decline in US ad spending to a number of factors, including a loss of economic momentum, the global deterioration from all continents but particularly the Eurozone and political and fiscal uncertainty at home for the election and beyond.”

To read the full unabridged article click here.

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

...  year-on-year adspending worldwide will increase 5.3%, representing an expenditure uplift of $533.2 billion versus 2012. 

The revised spending forecast was made in GroupM’s biannual worldwide report, This Year, Next Year, which also said that 2011 advertising spending in measured media hit $482 billion, a 5% increase over 2010 spending of $459 billion.

For the US market, the report predicts advertising investment in measured media will grow 3.6% this year to $152.5 billion, down from 4% growth projected in the previous report, issued December 2011.

For 2013, the latest report predicts a 3.1% increase in US media spending, totalling $157.2 billion.

Comments GroupM Chief Investment Officer Rino Scanzoni: “We attribute the decline in US ad spending to a number of factors, including a loss of economic momentum, the global deterioration from all continents but particularly the Eurozone and political and fiscal uncertainty at home for the election and beyond.”

Ad investment in the Eurozone periphery (Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain) fell 6.0% in 2011 and is expected to fall a further 8.8% in 2012 before stabilizing at par in 2013.

But GroupM Futures Director Adam Smith stressed that this prediction “assumes an orderly normalization of the Eurozone.”

Smith said all digital spending trends are positive everywhere irrespective of local economic conditions. “Internet advertising is growing in every country, so powerful is its structural and evolutionary development.”

Read the original unabridged article here.

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

... a slow-down in overall advertising revenue growth in 2012, compared to 2011.

Excluding P&O [profits and overheads?], core media owners advertising revenues (TV, internet, radio, newspapers, magazines and out-of-home) will grow 2.2%. This represents a small increase compared to the shop's previous forecast published in January (2.0%) and remains less than half the 2011 growth (4.8%).

The increase is entirely due to an upward revision in Magna's digital media forecast, following a strong Q4 in 2011 and a robust first quarter in 2012.  

Internet media (including national and local) will grow 12.2% (revised from +10.9%) to reach $35.6 billion and a 20.2% market share. Internet media is still driven by paid search, growing double-digit, as well as mobile advertising (53.1% to $2.4 billion), and online video (24.0% to $2.2 billion). With $1.6bn in 2011, mobile advertising already represents 5% of online advertising and 1% of total advertising in the US.

Says Vincent Letang, Magna's evp and Head of Global Forecasting: “Encouraged by the rise of smartphone and tablet usage and the availability of scalable platforms, mainstream advertisers are now fully embracing all mobile formats (display, search, video, in-app).

“We expect mobile-related online ad revenues to grow 53% in 2012, to $2.4bn. iAd and Facebook in particular will create more opportunities for marketers in various mobile environments in 2012”.

To download the full MagnaGlobal report, click here.

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

... increase their spending. The Fall 2011 AIR survey represents the 5th consecutive “optimistic” finding since the latest recession affected the advertising marketplace in 2007-2008.

Advertiser optimism, however, varies by medium. But all media have enjoyed varying degrees of improvement, with respondents showing the greatest optimism for advertising via mobile, digital, and cable-television media. They also showed moderate optimism for broadcast, and expect improvements for magazines and national newspapers. Even so, sentiment for print-media platforms remains largely pessimistic. 

A majority of advertisers in every major advertising category anticipate increasing their ad spending in 2012. Based on this data, Advertiser Perceptions anticipates that the most optimistic advertisers will be in beauty, alcoholic beverages, financial products/services, consumer electronics, and automotive categories.

Nearly all major advertisers have expanded their budgets for digital ad channels. As a result, the optimism trends in those chanels are especially strong. Search advertising is rebounding after a slight dip in the Spring of 2011, while optimism for digital video media is exceptionally strong.

Comments Advertiser Perceptions' founder/ceo Ken Pearl: “In 2012, the nation faces an uncertain economic environment, an unclear political climate, and unsteady consumer confidence.

“Nonetheless, in our large and comprehensive survey of more than 1,200 media decision-makers, AIR Wave 16 found broad-based optimism over the coming twelve months. This optimism among advertisers has been consistent in AIR since the Fall of 2009.”

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

... rosier, with predicted growth of 4.2%, courtesy of the dual uplift of the London Summer Olympics and the 2012 UEFA European Football Championships.

As for the USA, which is forecast to see a 4.1% increase in ad spend, its TV broadcasters will benefit bigtime from the November presidential and congressional elections.

Indeed, across all twelve nations covered by the survey, TV is predicted to increase its share of main media advertising, growing by 5.3% versus the all-media total of 4.5%.

As to online advertising, however, the pace of expansion is expected to slow to 12.6% this year, down from an estimated 16.6% in 2011. Despite which the internet is expected to account for 20% of all media spend come the end of 2012.

Comments Warc data editor Suzy Young: "With continuing debt worries affecting mature markets and knocking business and consumer sentiment, it is no surprise that 2012 adspend growth will come from emerging markets.

"Without the support from the presidential election and major sports tournaments, the outlook would have been even worse. But there are some bright spots in the data, with TV's performance looking particularly encouraging."

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

... in the world adspend league table. In 2011 Brazil hit number six in the global rankings, Russia came in at No. 11 and India 16th.

In a list of up-and-comers, acronymized as MIST, Mexico ranked No. 15; Indonesia, 17; South Korea, 12; and Turkey, 24. 

Says Zenith's head of forecasting, Jonathan Barnard: "Emerging markets are the main source of ad-expenditure growth. Over the next three years, half of all global growth in ad expenditure will come from just ten markets: the BRICs, the MISTs, South Africa and Argentina."

The twenty-five largest ad markets in 2011 include ten emerging economies:

• BRIC nations (see above)
• MIST (see above)
• South Africa (No. 14)
• Thailand (No. 22)
• Argentina (No. 26)

Among the 100 largest global advertisers, thirteen companies allocated more than 10% of 2010 measured-media spending to China, according to AdAge's Global Marketers report.

But don't jump to hasty conclusions, counsels Zenith: "The US remains the powerhouse of advertising, with spending more than three times that of No. 2 Japan.

Nonetheless, the USA's share of major-media global ad spending (TV, print, radio, cinema, outdoor and internet) fell from 44% in 1986 to 33% in 2011.

Analysing ZenithOptimedia's forecast data, AdAge DataCenter notes that spending in emerging markets is reaching a tipping point. Other key points highlighted by AdAge are ...

• Such outlays will make up 33.2% of worldwide major-media spending in 2014, marginally ahead of the US share at 32.0%.
   
• Emerging markets accounted for just 4% of worldwide major-media ad spending in 1986.
   
• Per capita spending in emerging markets remains a fraction of that in the United States.
   
• Advertisers spent $498 for every man, woman and child in the US in 2011. In China they spent $22 per capita - roughly equating to America's per capita ad expenditure in 1946.
   
• But consider how far China has come since 1986 when its per capita ad spending was just 9 cents!

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

... the introduction of new categories or emergence of new brands. It also assumes that individual marketer budgets will tend to hold constant over time. Maintaining the downbeat mode, Wieser doesn't foresee any significant new categories/brands emerging in 2012.

The report predicts that spending levels will generally flatten through the middle of 2012, after which the impact of status quo “new normal” should return, with weak growth in the periods that immediately follow. In the shadow of August’s U.S. debt downgrade, budget-setters approached uncommitted advertising expenditures with hesitation, although not to the extent initiatives were halted outright (as occurred during 4Q 2008).

Among the key points arising from the report are:

• Expectations for soft economic conditions reinforce short-term view and drive long-term view.
   
• Macro-economic data offers a proxy for new category and brand creation. Quantifying the creation of brand-differentiated categories is an elusive goal, but PRG posits that such activity tends to coincide with economic growth.
   
• The report focuses upon Personal Consumption Expenditures [PCE] and Industrial Production given the high correlation these variables have with changes in media owners’ advertising revenues.
   
• The Philadelphia Federal Reserve recently released its updated Survey of Professional Forecasters, which provides consensus expectations from more than fifty economists. The survey indicates approximately 4% growth in nominal PCE in 2012, which compares with nearly 6% levels from between 1991 and 2007.
   
• If, in parallel, Industrial Production rises by 3% the regression model used by PRG to predict advertising growth yields only 1% growth.
   
• Assuming industrial production picks up in following years - reflecting a modestly improving economy in 2013 and beyond - we would expect 2-3% growth rates for the market over longer time horizons, at least until broader economic conditions meaningfully improve.

Individual medium growth trends in 2012 will reinforce a “have/have-not” media economy, between TV and Digital on one hand and other forms of traditional media on the other.

Simply put, in scarce times, marketers are concentrating their budgets among their primary medium (often network TV for large brands seeking awareness) and a secondary medium (often Digital platforms for traditional brand marketers, who typically pursue engagement-based outcomes among a subset of the population who are aware of their brand attributes). In general, we expect to see National Mass Media continuing to gain share at the expense of Local Mass Media.

But Direct Media should continue to grow faster than Mass Media. In this context, mobile advertising will grow fastest, up 37% in 2012, decelerating in percentage terms from 2011, but adding a comparable amount of dollars in absolute terms.

Paid Search will add the most in absolute dollars among all media during 2012, up from $14.8B to $17.0B. Also of note: while PRG expects National Cable will perform well versus other media, that medium should slow significantly in 2012, rising by only 4.8% (compared to a gain of 9.0% in 2011).

Unsurprisingly, Local Newspapers will fare worst during 2012, falling by 9.4% to generate $1.8B less revenue than in 2011. Only Directories will perform weaker in percentage terms, falling by another 22.6% for the year.

The complete report can be accessed by clicking here.

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.