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Media buyers expect business as usual at this year’s upfront.
Buyers polled at the American Association of Advertising Agencies’ annual media conference last week didn’t expect the writers’ strike to have much, if any, impact on this year’s upfront buying season. Networks are expected to be asking for a big increase over current pricing because today’s scatter spots are 40 to 50 percent more than what buyers paid in the last upfront, wrote MediaWeek.
The networks’ prime time upfront could come in just slightly lower than last year due to some clients shifting slivers of budgets to other media explored during the strike. Not knowing how the fall line-up looks will have little impact on planning; buyers say that networks get only 20 percent of the buy anyway.
The buyers’ general feelings seems to be that they’ll play ball with the networks as long as the big four don’t get greedy and overvalue inventory.
Some high prices are being seen now because of makegoods necessitated by poorly performing shows - and makegoods tighten availability. Buyers are hopeful that all makegoods will be paid off by the end of May.
Hyper-conservative Rush Limbaugh - heard weekly by nearly 20 million listeners on about 600 radio stations nationwide - renewed his contract with Premiere Radio Networks and Clear Channel Radio, continuing syndication of The Rush Limbaugh Show.
The deal also includes…
WSJ.com’s traffic soared an impressive 94 percent in June compared to the same month last year, according to the company’s internal traffic numbers.
Total page views ballooned 45 percent, to 150 million, compared to the same month last year, writes Mediaweek.…
Kozy Shack, maker of rice and chocolate pudding, is sponsoring the New York Mets, with tubs of the pudding being sold individually at Shea Stadium as well as being included in children’s meals. And the snacks are selling so well…
Though U.K. advertiser investment committed for 2008 is staying put, discretionary spending is becoming shorter-term, at or slightly short of budget; still, WPP’s GroupM forecasts 4 percent growth in 2008 and 3 percent in 2009 for the U.K., thanks to internet…
Email is the most popular form of direct response marketing, with 35 percent of companies using it - compared to 25 percent that use traditional direct mail - according to a new survey conducted by Direct Partners (via Adweek).
The survey…
Without spam protection, the average web user can expect to get 70 spam messages each day, according to a survey by McAfee, the BBC reports (via MarketingVOX).
For the McAfee spam test, 50 people worldwide were asked to web-surf without a spam…
