Research firm sees flat growth in ad spending in ’14

Advertising in traditional media platforms would likely stay the same in 2014 compared to last year, setting a tempered outlook for an industry that benefited from a boost during the 2013 elections, an executive of research firm Kantar Media said yesterday.

Kantar’s data—which showed that P340 billion was spent last year for television, radio and print ads—come as media companies are challenged to post higher sales amid the normalization of advertising conditions,  Gabriel Buluran, general manager of Kantar Media, said.

“Growth this year would be flat, on the most optimistic,” Buluran said in a briefing Thursday.

Kantar’s data gave a clear snapshot of the Philippine media scene, with television firmly at the top with 78 percent share of the ad spending pie. Kantar said 92 percent of urban homes and 72 percent of rural homes had at least one TV set.

Radio came in second with 18 percent and print, mainly newspapers, cornered 4 percent.

Kantar started collating data only last year, thus, comparative figures for 2012 were not available, he said. Spending for Internet advertising, while still relatively small in the Philippines, was also not measured since there were no clear-cut standards on how to measure this and Internet penetration among households remained low, he noted.

Nevertheless, Internet ad spending is expected to grow, Buluran said.

“Digital would definitely change the patterns of growth,” he noted. “We are still in the early stages.”

The data also showed what majority of Filipinos were buying, from the perspective of advertising budgets.

Top products were shampoo and conditioner as well as toothpaste and detergents, Kantar’s data showed.