For the first time in the six years since an independent researcher began tracking “advertiser confidence” to spend their future budgets on major media, ad execs signaled a note of pessimism toward digital media. This despite the fact that sentiment for spending across all media remains at the periodic study’s all-time high, according to the Advertiser Optimism Report from Advertiser Perceptions Inc.
While the confidence of ad execs to invest in digital media during the next 12 months remains high overall, the fact that it is beginning to wane at all is “being driven primarily by marketers who indicate that they will be spending less with digital publishers and portals,” says Ken Pearl, a partner and co-founder of API.
The second “surprise” in the new report, which is based on a recent survey of adverisers and agency executives, he says, “is that marketers are bullish when it comes to spending on traditional media — namely broadcast television, magazines and national newspapers.”
As has been detected by API in the past, there is some divergence between marketers and their agency counterparts when it comes to their spending plans for major media.
“Agencies are in agreement in their optimism for national newspapers, however remain more pessimistic about broadcast and magazine ad spending than their clients,” Pearl notes, adding that overall, all ad execs remain extremely buoyant in their plans to invest in mobile media.
