The new Truvo has launched!

At the beginning of the month we went live with our new user proposition, a local search and community site called -guess- Truvo. The site is live in Belgium -for now-, and we will soon launch Portugal and Ireland. It allows user to leave comments, reviews, ratings and pictures about places in Belgium. The database cover almost 800,000 ‘places’, and we got about 5,000 good quality reviews in the first...

Advertising forecast

Gloomy expectations for advertising in the coming years. A recent report from PWC reports Ad Sales down 15% in 2009 in US to 161bn$. Worst performers, not surprisingly, the newspapers. Ad spending will keep on falling -although at a lower rate- till 2012. At that time, internet share (including mobile) of ad spend is expected to be at 19% -WOW! That will be about 33.8bn$. In the Global Entertainment and Media...

TV Ad rates to 15 year low in UK

Not really surprising, but interesting on the FT. TV Ad rates are now back to 1992 levels. We know advertising is a cyclical business, and no surprise is turning downward so quickly in such challenging (to say the least) economic environment. Also, the FT says that 35% of companies cut ad budgets for the 4th quarter running. Advertising revenues in TV fell 17% YoY in September, but the actual fall in prices is more...

Global advertising spending growth/fall in 2009

Interesting on the FT. Zenith Optimedia (Publicis) forecasts a growth in global advertising of 4% in 2009, and 0.6% in US, while Barclays Capital forecasts a fall of 5.5% of spend in US. I am with Barclays. Advertising will go down in 2009, and not only in US. I expect it to be down worldwide. It’s a cyclical business, and the economy is not in good shape. I expect the budget migration from offline to online...

The economy slow down and online advertising

We surely are in an economic slowdown, if not in a recession. Some even say a depression. How long it is going to last isn’t easy to say. Some say months, some say quarters, some others (a few, in fairness) say years. I say at least quarters, and I say recession, without inflation. So what is going to be the effect of such difficult times on advertising? Well, surely a cut in spend. Marketing budgets are...