Consumer Package Goods Makers Tighten TV Belt, Embrace Online Ads

Digital advertising keeps on crashing the TV party.

In network television, the upfront is the traditional name given to the time that the television medium's largest advertisers are shown the programming offerings for the new season and given first crack at advertising time on the network's shows.  Even though the rhythms of the TV season aren't what they once were - the idea of the "fall season" has largely gone by the wayside in the cable-heavy landscape - the upfronts remain the key indicators of the coming year for the network TV business.

Few sectors matter more to TV advertising than the consumer package goods industry. Branded soap, canned and frozen food, and the like are the traditional life's blood of TV advertising.  And as I've been bringing up here again and again, online display advertising continues to see more and more CPG business as these giants of brand move from experiments in banners and display to well-handled, highly localized campaigns.  Today's news continues to support that trend.

In Jack Neff's Ad Age piece "Package Goods Titans Talking Tough On Network TV Upfront", the news is more of the same.  CPG's TV dollars are being diverted into digital dollars at an ever-increasing clip.

Those players, particularly P&G and Unilever, appear to have been spending more on all sorts of marketing, including TV, this year. P&G, Unilever and RB collectively spent $2.4 billion on TV last year, according to Kantar Media, down around $1 billion from 2008 thanks largely to more than $800 million in cuts by P&G. Unilever actually raised TV spending 3%.

But all three juiced digital spending significantly, with P&G and Unilever at least doubling their internet outlays, per Kantar. Unilever also hiked digital spending another 90% last quarter, it reported last week. The measured data doesn't pick up search, smaller websites, the full cost of behavioral targeting or most video, including RB's reported $25 million outlay. Digital or no, however, P&G and RB both cut measured spending sharply last year, while Unilever stepped up spending