What a year, what a year.

No one would argue that 2009 was a tough year for our national economy. Small and large businesses have felt the pain and unemployment is at a striking high.  But how did that effect marketers and advertisers in 2009, and how will 2010 be? Lets take a look at some expert analysis and projections.

According to the Nielsen Company, overall U.S. advertising spending declined 11.5% in 2009, or $83.4 billion. (January through September 2009.) Here’s a summary of some of their findings.

Cable TV: 9%
Spanish Language: 37%
Radio: -10%
National Sunday Newspaper Supplement:  -13.6%
Local Sunday Newspaper Supplement: -48%
Local Newspaper: -14%
National Magazine: -21%
B to B Magazine: -33%
Outdoor (Billboard): -15%
Internet: -0.5%
(Note: Internet advertising expenditures only included CPM based, image based advertising such as banner ads. This does not include paid search, text, performance based campaigns, sponsorships, affiliate programs, pre-rolls, messenger applications, email campaigns or house advertising activity.)

If there’s one thing you’re probably noticing when you look at the list above, it’s that advertising in general was down in 2009. Unfortunately for many of our friends and colleagues that has meant job losses for many. In fact, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 15.4 million people are unemployed currently - or 10% of our total population. Media, marketing and advertising sectors have not been spared from this brutal decline in jobs, and in fact many times when there is less money to be spent in advertising and marketing, companies need less people to spend it; resulting in higher job losses in those sectors.  All this would come after a decade that created relatively few jobs: a net total of just 464,000. By contrast, 21.7 million new jobs were generated between 1989 and 1999.

But despite the fact that ad spends were down, there were two big winners in 2009.  The two winners were search marketing (”search engine marketing” or “SEM”), and mobile.

In quarter three alone the quarter over quarter SEM spend increased by 10%, which represented SEM budgets for multi-channel marketers that were 40% higher than the same quarter, 2008! (SearchIgnite.com)  Search engine marketing can include natural SEO (search engine optimization) and paid search marketing such as pay-per-click.

The other big winner in 2009 is mobile marketing. Mobile marketing is just beginning to really grow, but let me put it to you this way - in January 2009 the total number of mobile phone subscriptions on the planet reached 4 billion!  SMS text messaging is by far the most widely used data application on the planet. Today SMS has 3.0 billion active users worldwide.

Further, advertising spend is shifting as well. The total mobile content industry is now worth 71 billion dollars in annual revenues which is about the same size as the total internet based advertising and content revenues put together. Or to contrast, “the mobile content revenues have in only ten years grown to be as big as the global Hollywood movie industry box office revenues, plus the global music recordings industry total sales, plus the videogaming total software sales - combined.” (Read more about the size of the mobile industry.) Mobile content is by far the fastest growing media category and it grew by 41% in late 2008 through early 2009.

And of course, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention social media. Despite the recession, more than 50% of marketers increased their spending in social media in 2009. Although not addressed specifically by Neilson, social media is a channel that can no longer be ignored or considered a “nice to have” strategy.

So - what does our future in marketing hold?

Most economists say it could take at least until 2015 for the unemployment rate to drop down to a historically more normal 5.5 percent. And with the job market likely to stay weak, some also foresee another decade of wage stagnation.  But marketers should not be discouraged. Instead, adaptation is in order! Re-education into mobile marketing and Internet marketing channels is the perfect solution to job losses for marketers.

In fact, despite economic projections for 2010, Small Business Trends found the following in their recent survey of business owners when asked how their marketing and advertising budgets would change for 2010:

• 74.1 percent will increase their email marketing spend.
• 68.3 percent will increase their social media spend.
• 23.8 will avoid search engine marketing.
• 54.2 percent will not invest in banner advertising.
• 79.6 percent will not run television ads.
• 72.7 percent will be not run radio advertising.

(SmallBizTrends.com)

And mobile marketing is also projected to grow. It is estimated that we will have 100% mobile phone penetration in the U.S. by 2013. (Mobile.engadget.com) Holy cow!

Microsoft has forecast further growth in the mobile advertising sector over the next five years as well, thus their strong showing in mobile technology with the “Droid” series.  (MediaPost.com) And one report I found stated that in 2014, the mobile channel will account for at least five per cent of advertising spending across the world.  (Velti.com).

The bottom line is that the outlook for marketers is positive, as long as we’re all ready to adjust, learn and grow! The best thing about the Internet is that education is at your fingertips, and so are lots of experts in these fields so don’t hesitate to ask for help.

Happy New Year!

This entry was posted Sunday, December 27th, 2009 at 9:20 pm and is filed under General Marketing, Search Engine Optimization. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.