Source: http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=120363
Gains for Cable TV, Consumer Mags, Outdoor and Web
By Nat Ives
Published: September 11, 2007
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- U.S. ad spending in the first half of this year slipped to $72.59 billion, a 0.3% decline from the first half of 2006, as the second quarter repeated the falloff of the
first.
The top 10 advertisers' collective outlay fell 2.2% in the first half as five of them made significant cuts.
If the drop seems slight, remember that media sellers' costs are rising fast. Even more unsettling, this is the first time since 2001 that media ad spending has fallen for two quarters in a row, according to TNS Media Intelligence, which produced today's numbers.
More challenges ahead
"While the protracted downturn in automotive spending has been a prime contributor, the overall results reflect weakness across a wide range of industries and advertisers," said Steven Fredericks, president-CEO of TNS. "Given the uncertainties about near-term economic growth and consumer spending, we expect core ad spending will continue to face challenges during the second half of the year."
It's true that the first quarter of 2006 was blessed by the Winter Olympics ad bonanza, but it would have been soft even without the Olympic effect. And the second quarter declined without any particularly tough comparison from 2006.
The only media to gain were cable TV, which was up 2.8%; consumer magazines, up 6.9%; Sunday magazines, up 4.3%; Spanish language magazines, up 13.1%; outdoor, up 3.6%; and, of course, the internet, up 17.7%. That internet figure doesn't include keyword search or video advertising -- TNS doesn't track those.
TV feels pain
The brunt of the budget cuts hit network TV, which was down 3.6%; spot TV, down 5.4%; business-to-business magazines, down 7.2%; local magazines, down 4.2%; local newspapers, down 5.7%; national papers, down 6.4%; Spanish language papers, down 4.4%; local radio, down 1.5%; national spot radio, down 5.3%; and network radio, down 4.4%.
The top 10 advertisers' collective outlay fell 2.2% in the first half as five of them made significant cuts. Spending fell 12.5% at AT&T; 25.1% at General Motors; 7.9% at Time Warner; 9.1% at Johnson & Johnson; and 2.6% at Walt Disney.
Fortunately for the media business, the other half increased their budgets. The biggest advertiser, Procter & Gamble, raised ad spending 1.8% to reach $1.61 billion. Spending also rose at Verizon Communications, which was up 8.8%; Ford Motor, up 2.7%; Sprint Nextel, up 13.5%; and National Amusements, up an impressive 56.5%.
By category, declines registered in telecom, which was down 6.3%; nondomestic auto, down 6.1%; domestic auto, down 10.8%; and travel and tourism, down 1.2%. The biggest category of the half, financial services, expanded spending 3.5%. Local services and amusements spending increased 2.1%. Miscellaneous retail (excluding department stores, food stores and home furnishing and appliance stores) grew 0.2%. Direct-response advertising rose at the greatest rate, 11.3%. Personal-care products grew 6.7%. And restaurants expanded 0.8%.
Read More...
Summary only...
Remember those crazy sons of guns at patent holding firm NTP that ended up working RIM for a shade over $612 million? They're back at it, throwing lawsuits at AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon -- that's three of the States' four national carriers, in case you're keeping count -- for alleged infringements of eight patents involving mobile email. The firm seems to be something of a one-trick pony seeing how mobile email was the issue at hand with RIM and later with Palm; for a company that does nothing but sue other companies, two-thirds of a billion dollars seems like a plenty healthy bank account, but heck, what do we know? At this point, we're assuming that once they're done suing every company that's ever offered, used, or mentioned "mobile" and "email" in the same sentence, we'll finally be able to put this issue to rest -- but until that day comes, watch your back, folks, because NTP's back on the prowl.
Update: Silly us for thinking NTP wouldn't just go ahead and make it a nice, round four! T-Mobile's been caught up in the suit, too, with its Sidekick services specifically called out (among others) for infringement of NTP's email patents.
[Via Phone Scoop]
It turns out there are still things where Craft, and I use it with a capital "C" here, matters-it's where CAD tools haven't brought about the ability to simulate out our mistakes before we build them. The creation of a flat pattern for textile goods is a good example of a process that requires a Craftsman. A flat pattern is the set of 2-D shapes used to guide the cutting of fabrics. These 2-D shapes are cut, folded and sewn into a complex 3-D shape. Mapping the projection of an arbitrary 3-D shape onto a 2-D surface with minimal waste area between the pieces is hard enough; the fact that the material stretches and distorts, sometimes in an anisotropic fashion, and the fact that sewing requires ample tolerances for good yields makes it a difficult problem to automate. On the chumby, we add another level of complexity, because we sew a piece of leather onto a soft plastic frame. As you sew the leather on, the frame will distort slightly and stretch the leather out, creating a sewing bias dependent upon the direction and rate of sewing. This force is captured in the seams and contributes to the final shape of the device. I challenge someone to make a computer simulation tool that can accurately capture those forces and predict how a device will look at the end of the day. 
Asahi Shimbun reports that a woman in Osaka discovered these pretty katydids in a field. 
Posts
