Advertising and the recession
I currently work in a niche of the advertising industry. Recently I was at a conference where several ad industry speakers pointed out that advertising in 2008 is stagnating, if not in fact retreating. Ad categories that are flat and or down in the last year include: financial services, travel, real estate, jobs, automotive. Outside of packaged goods, these would have to be the lagest segments of the ad industry. If major publishers are looking at negative growth, or at best, flatlining in these segments, what does that portend for the trajectory of our economy? Clearly there are macro economic forces at work here, but for the most part we have been thinking about the impact on housing starts, access to credit, core price inflation, and interest rates. We’ve yet to really see the impact spread to other sectors, like advertising. Stay tuned…