There is some depressing new proof that direct response space advertising has lost ground.
Direct response was the only category showing a year-to-year decline in July magazine space advertising expenditures, and one of only three to drop in the first half of 1999 compared with the prior year, according to data released by the Publishers Information Bureau (PIB).
Direct response advertisers, who spent $78.3 million on magazine placements in July 1998 – second only to the automotive industry – saw their spending levels drop by 6.6%, to $73.1 million.
The category now lags behind automotive ($158.4 million); technology ($87.5 million); home furnishings and supplies ($74.3 million); and food and food products ($74 million).
While expenditures across all industries showed a 14.7% increase in revenue, direct response was the only category that showed a July decline.
Moreover, for the first six months of 1999, three sectors reported spending drops: direct response, which fell 1.5%, from $690.6 million to $680 million; toiletries and cosmetics, which dropped 3.8% from $637.8 million to $613.6 million; and food and food products, which decreased 3.7% from $545.9 million to $525.5 million.
The drop in direct response spending, combined with double-digit growth in technology advertising, saw direct response advertisers fall from second place in overall spending in first-half 1998 to third place in 1999, with automotive advertising leading the pack in both instances.
The figures seem to counter an upward trend that was reported last year by the Direct Marketing Association.
Expenditures on direct response magazine advertising in 1998 totaled 55.5% of total magazine advertising, up from 53.5% in 1993, according to the 1998 WEFA study for the DMA.
They also show a change from the first-quarter results reported by the PIB in which revenue hit $321 million, up 3.5% from the same period in 1998. (Pages, however, fell by 2.2% in the first quarter.)
The reason?
It could be that some marketers are diverting money from print budgets to online experiments.
“There’s always been attrition but now we’re losing it to e-commerce,” Mary Hayes, vice president and director of corporate direct response advertising for Hearst Magazines, told DIRECT earlier this year.
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