|
03 Nov 2008
Shanghai
While Sponsors and their Competitors ramped up their August ad budgets to maximize their exposure over the Games month, the bulk of China’s advertisers took a serious ad break for the month, resulting in China registering a monthly ad spend figure close to 2007 levels, and not much higher than in May, when the Sichuan earthquake hit and advertising was suspended for three days.
According to latest figures from Nielsen, total China ad spend growth in August – the Olympic month – was only seven percent up on the same month in 2007, compared to average growth of 19 percent in the seven-month lead in to the Games.
“While Sponsors and their Competitors ramped up their spending in August to maximize their brands’ exposure on the world stage, the bulk of the advertising industry pulled out of the race, for fear of being out-spent and upstaged,” said Richard Basil-Jones, Managing Director, Media Asia Pacific, The Nielsen Company.
“The amount spent on advertising in the Olympic month (RMB40.3 Billion/US$5.3 Billion) was only slightly ahead of the amount spent in May (RMB38.6 Billion/US$5.1 Billion) when the Sichuan earthquake hit, advertisers’ activity was suspended for three days and ad schedules were modified in consideration of this serious natural disaster,” added Basil-Jones.
And while Sponsor advertising increased 40 percent in August (RMB2.8 Billion/US$370 Million) and their competitors stepped up to the plate to maintain some level of awareness, their combined increase by no means compensated for the withdrawal of the rest of the market.
“This is quite unprecedented, based on our monitoring of advertising behavior and spending for previous Olympic Games. Rather than attempt to battle it out with the Sponsors, other players opted simply to ‘sit out’ the month of August. For Sponsors, this would have cleared the airwaves of a lot of ‘noise’ and may well have given them even greater cut through,” said Basil-Jones.
In September with the Olympics behind us and Sponsors’ budgets exhausted – spending 18 percent less than September last year - other industries have returned to the market with their budgets refreshed, registering a healthier near-pre Games growth of 16 percent, according to Nielsen.
“With the London Games four years out, time will tell whether this was a situation unique to China, or whether in the future, other non-Sponsors will chose to sit on the side lines, leaving the Games open and clear for Sponsors to enjoy maximum cut through in an unusually uncluttered advertising environment,” added Basil-Jones.
About The Nielsen Company
The Nielsen Company is a global information and media company with leading market positions in marketing information, media information, online intelligence, mobile measurement, trade shows and business publications (Billboard, The Hollywood Reporter, Adweek). The privately held company is active in more than 100 countries, with headquarters in New York, USA. For more information, please visit, www.nielsen.com
# # #
Back to Top
|
