Janet Robinson, CEO of The New York Times, warns of a decrease higher than 8% in revenue drops for this quarter. “It’s clear that that economic conditions have been very difficult and getting more difficult, certainly even since the second quarter, and global uncertainty continues to be in the forefront.” The expected decreases are hurt by a pullback in real estate, help wanted and national auto ads. “With that in mind, we are seeing softness in the advertising business, the advertising market is definitely under pressure, and we are seeing that advertisers are certainly less likely or less frequently committing up fronts, primarily because of the uncertainty in their business.” It is easy for companies to be nervous with everything going on in the world: European debt crisis, stock market ping pong, job market jumble, housing market hum drum.
It isn’t everyone who is a nervous Nelly, big companies such as; CBS, Disney and Discovery seem to have a positive attitude about recent advertising. “I know the world wants us to say, ‘Gee, the economy is down and our advertising is down.’ That’s just not the case. The advertising climate is very strong,” said CBS CEO Les Moonves. Is this just hype at a convention held by Goldman Sachs? Are you putting individuals together in a room who are great with words and are getting you to buy what their selling? Are they trying to convince themselves? Or is the advertising market really good?
Discovery CEO David Zaslav had this to say, “The advertising market remains very strong, and it’s been strong now for a year and a half. We haven’t seen any slowdown. We’ve seen it continue around the world. Now there clearly is a disconnect between what the economy is doing and what we are seeing on the advertising side, but we have not seen any slowdown.” Is Mr. Zaslav talking about not seeing a slowdown since 2009’s spending drop of 16%, or is he speaking in terms of when advertising spending was at a more consistent level of marketing percentages? And what exactly is he referring (some would speculate deferring) to when he says disconnect between economy and advertising? In this world of marketing mumble jumble can anything be trusted other than the cold hard facts: numbers, numbers, numbers. I guess it will be seen at the end of this quarter when those figures are released whether it’s time to be calm or concerned.
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