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Citigroup is lopping as much as $120 million off its advertising budget, for now.
The company’s dramatic cuts in media spending include cable TV, magazines and the internet. In some cases, cable deals were axed in the middle of upfront negotiations and publishers were told to cancel ads that were already scheduled to run, according to AdAge. In the second half of 2005, Citigroup spent $120 million in cable, online and magazines.
Citigroup’s largest individual shareholder has called for cost-cutting, but CEO Chuck Prince has been vocal about resisting the tactic, telling the Wall Street Journal that he refused to “starve the business” in order to give stock prices a boost, according to the article. Last year, Citigroup spent more than half of its roughly $1 billion budget on measured media on the Citi brand.
The cuts aren’t expected to be long-term. Mediaedge:cia and Starlink handle media planning and buying.
All sectors of the media business will suffer from the weakened economy in 2008 and 2009, with a slump in local advertising particularly hurting newspapers and local TV, according to a new projection from Goldman Sachs.
Broadcast nets will experience…
The New York Times is shuttering its International Herald Tribune site; NYTimes.com will soon host the international news normally reserved for its sister website.
The move is not about cost savings, but rather about growth, NYTimes.com general manager Vivian Schiller…
Unilever’s Vaseline set forth on an unusual research project in a small town in Alaska. Setting up a storefront, the company began giving away free bottles of lotion and asking recipients to name the person who had recommended they come…
Meet the Press, the show hosted by Tim Russert for 17 years before his death last June, is beginning to slip in ratings.
Last month, CBS’s Face the Nation pulled ahead of Meet the Press for the first time in two…
Bloggers collectively create nearly one million blog posts each day, and half of bloggers believe blogs will be a primary source of news and entertainment in the next five years, according to Technorati’s 2008 State of the Blogosphere Report, MarketingCharts writes.…
Wal-Mart and Costco reported same-store gains in September, with sales rising 2.4% and 9% respectively. Sales at Target stores open at least a year fell 3%, writes Retailer Daily.
Below, fiscal results from the discount retail giants:
Sales of food and…
