It's Official: Ad Budgets Will be Reduced

It's about time.This sort-of-but-not-really recession has had everyone talking for, well, years, it seems. Today, we have some meat on the subject. And it isn't tasty. The Association of National Advertisers has released a study citing 53 percent of surveyed marketing executives expect their ad budgets to be reduced withing the next six months and 87 percent are already identifying cutbacks.

Areas cited for cuts are media (69 percent), travel (63 percent), production (63 percent) and new work (61 percent). Of those already planning cutbacks, 50 percent expect a ten percent reduction, 27 percent expect an 11-20 percent reduction and ten percent expect cuts or more than 30 percent.

ANA President Bob Liodice dragged out the advice du jour for a downturn, saying, "Historically, marketing budgets are among the first to be cut in a budget crunch. In fact, spending more during tough times when competitors may be scaling back is a good way to strategically boost market share, because this often helps brands come out ahead when the economy rebounds."

He right though it's rare for marketers to heed that advice when faced with the fact there just isn't enough money even to pay people's salaries at times. Thouhg like all recessions, the industry will weather its way through.