Ad Spending Loses Steam

Evidence is mounting that U.S. ad spending, under pressure from a sputtering economy, has begun to slip.

Preliminary data for the first two months of the third quarter suggest that decelerating growth in ad spending in the first half of the year could shift to a decline in the third quarter. Spending in July and August combined fell about 1.5%, according to Kantar Media, after rising 2.9% in the second quarter and 4.4% in the first. It was up 6.5% for 2010. There are even signs that national television, which has been one of the most resilient sectors of the ad marketplace, has begun to see slower growth. Executives from several of the major U.S. media companies indicated over the past couple of weeks that they were seeing softer spending on national TV commercials in the fourth quarter of 2011. And most of the big media companies posted slower year-on-year TV ad-sales growth than in the second quarter.