The rumour mill was in high gear this morning as speculation mounted about further cuts in "upfront" US TV advertising spending from the world's largest media buyer, P&G. While such cuts do not preclude P&G from buying TV time on the spot market, it does hint at a growing downward price pressure on TV spots as advertisers begin to act on the declining effectiveness of TV advertising.
For those of you who follow P&G, this should not come as a huge surprise. P&G's senior leadership have been public about their beliefs that the advertising industry is reacting too slowly to trends that increasingly put consumers in charge (for those with Wall Street Journal archives acess, see the article "P&G Chief's Turnaround Recipe: Find Out What Women Want" for more on this).
A reduction in TV spend, in favor of other media, and interactive media in particular, is a logical extension of this rhetoric. The big question on my mind is, how, exactly, will they spend this money? It's hard to see P&G, a group that was built on advertising, radically reducing their overall spend in the area, so it will be interesting to see who (and what) gets the lion's share of those dollars in the future.
Given that consumers are increasingly empowered to select which content they view, that money would be well spent on content that consumers actively want to see: a tall order for a group that sells detergents and tootpaste, but by no means insurmountable. One thing is sure: where P&G treads, many others will surely follow.
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