Strata Survey Provides Key Insights to Media Economy in 2009

CHICAGO, IL – January 7, 2009 – Decreased advertising dollars, a focus on television and a bump in internet advertising in 2009 – three key issues derived from a recent survey by Strata Marketing Inc. Strata surveyed media buying advertising agency clients to get an idea of trends and challenges agencies may be facing heading into the new year. The sample is from 40 agencies of varying sizes across the country.

Consistent with numerous industry reports, advertising is perceived to be down with this group. Compared to the same time last year, half of the agencies surveyed felt that their business has decreased this quarter. The survey group did see a light at the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel may be long. Of the respondents, 45% felt that the economy and their business will not return to a strong growth period until at least early 2010, though a quarter of the agencies see a rebound by late 2009.

The advertising dollars may be less, but of those dollars the focus of media buying and placement looks to remain with spot television. The survey showed that 60% say that their customers are more focused on spot TV than any other type of placement in 2009, that number jumps to 73% in the Midwest. Of the focus on spot TV, 77.5% say they will spend either the same amount or more in 2009 than they did in 2008.

“Clients seem to realize the value of television in these very trying times,” Barb Pervisky, General Sales Manager for CBS affiliate WKBT-TV added. “They still want to use television and are trying to find ways to make their dollars stretch.”

The survey also indicated that advertising on the internet continues to take a larger share of advertising dollars. Compared to last year, 70% said that they plan on doing more internet advertising, with 25% staying the same. Only 5% said that their clients will advertise less on the internet in 2009. The bump in internet advertising was very noticeable in the Midwest, where 82% of respondents say that they see their customers more focused on internet than last year compared to just 58% in the West.

“Entering into this survey we were curious to find out the direction media buyers are going in 2009,” said Strata President/CEO John Shelton. “While I was surprised at the continued strength of spot TV, I wasn’t shocked at the persistent emergence of internet as an advertising choice.”

So where are those advertising dollars coming from if 50% of those surveyed plan on a decrease in business since this point last year? The answer is print advertising. Of the 40 agencies, 57.5% say that their customers will cut their print advertising from last year.

More results of the survey….

• 440% project their future growth in the 1st half of 2009 as worse than the last half of 2008, while 37.5% projected their growth to be better.
• 50% of agencies see their customers making minor cuts in their 2009 budgets compared to last year, 30% see their customers keeping their budgets the same as 2008.
• 45% see client attraction as the biggest challenge in 2009 while 20% thought client spending was the biggest challenge.
• Only 17.5% of the agencies plan on expanding their staff in 2009.

Strata sells and supports a full suite of software for end-to-end connection between media buyers and sellers. For more information about Strata, please call (800) 9 STRATA or (800) 978-7282.

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About Strata Marketing, Inc.
Founded in 1983, Strata Marketing, Inc. serves the media industry with software solutions for media buying and advertising sales. In addition, Strata offers custom software development through its Spot Buy Spot division. As a leader in electronic commerce for the media industry, Strata has been selected to build TVB ePort, and to supply the industry with low-cost, popular services like TVInvoices.com and RadioInvoices.com. The Chicago-based company currently services more than 1,200 clients and 13,000 individual buyers and sellers in the United States and Canada. Strata is owned by Comcast Cable. For more information, visit www.stratag.com.

Media Contact
J.D. Miller
Marketing Manager
Strata Marketing Inc.
(312) 222-1555
jmiller@stratag.com