Wednesday, November 9, 2011

TV Stations, Local Advertisers Brace For 2012 Political Ad Season

This essay supports my belief that with all the new media available such as search, mobile, video and Internet business...if local-direct and agency represented clients who have depended on your company to broadcast and make firm their brand...choose to shift their ad dollars to those alternatives as a means of media marketing, your share of local ad dollars could be compromised following the 2012 election period. Therefore, in 2013 and beyond, making budget may become most difficult..Local businesses are the real backbone of local broadcast revenue and profitability!! Philip Jay LeNoble, Ph.D.

MediaPost's MEDIA WATCH
A media critique by Wayne Friedman , Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2011

Too much of a good thing? TV stations will be getting a whiff of this next year when it comes to a really big kick up of TV political ad revenues -- estimated to net north of $3.2 billion.

The rub of these big election years always hits regular, nontraditional political advertisers like a black-eye. That's because political advertising -- by FCC mandate -- not only gives marketers the "lowest unit charge," it allows political spots to pre-empt a TV station's more regular, nontraditional political media.

Regular TV advertisers can be left in the lurch -- not too good for any media planning strategy. Some ad agencies are looking to get around this by building packages around additions of "sponsorships," "brand mentions" and buys on a station's Internet business.

The belief -- from those media agencies -- is that these added pieces of a TV buy will help lessen the blow TV advertisers might take in 2012. As "packages," their local TV spots might now be "non-preemptable" local ad spots, according to a TVNewscheck report.

Where this ends up as a legal or regulatory matter is anyone's guess. But one thing is for sure: This is just the start of a negotiation salvo.

Packaging in local TV spots with theoretically "higher" priced sponsorship entitlements, as well as somewhat lower-unit priced (but higher CPM) Web site business ad avails, may even out local TV media buys for traditional spot TV advertisers.

Better reach? Better media ROI? As usual, these are the big questions.

But given continued lower ratings on broadcast TV, many might say local TV advertisers have more options to move money elsewhere -- to other local Internet businesses and/or local cable MSOs and interconnects.

After a rough late 2008 and a tough 2009, TV stations should temper their giddiness about the 2012 political advertising windfall -- even after witnessing a robust 2010, thanks to record political TV advertising revenues and the usual local TV Olympic ad spike.

There is no doubt traditional TV advertising platforms -- in all its current forms -- continue to defy expectations by new media and technology pundits.

Federal regulatory requirements aside, no TV buying or selling executives' memories should be clouded by the deep recessionary 2009 year, which still places TV stations well below their record TV advertising totals earlier in the decade.

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