By Tom Ryan
The Nielsen Company has come out with its first 12-month analysis of advertising spending on media outlets that reach African American consumers. One advertising exec called the survey "the first time such a comprehensive analysis of advertising spending to reach African Americans has been undertaken."
The study found that advertising spending targeting African Americans reached $2.3 billion for the period October 1, 2006 through September 30, 2007. The analysis covered over 22,000 national, regional and local advertisers across over 130 media vehicles. These include local radio, national magazine, national cable TV, network TV and syndication TV.
Local radio reported the greatest amount of spending on African American targeted media at $805 million, comprising 35 percent of total spending. Second was national magazines ($600.9 million) which showed healthy revenue across a number of publications, including Essence.
National cable TV ($593.1 million) reported the largest ad growth with 14.5 percent during this period, reflecting year-over-year growth for BET, the inclusion of TV One in the Nielsen Monitor-Plus service as of January 2007, as well as a number of high profile TV programs such as "House of Payne" on TBS, "Being Bobby Brown" on Bravo, "Flavor of Love" on VH1, and "Making the Band" on MTV. Network TV ($193.3 million) and syndication TV ($102.4 million) were both down year over year.
With $89.7 million in spending, Procter & Gamble was the largest advertiser targeting African American consumers. The top P&G brands advertised were Charmin, Bounty, Crest, Olay, Cover Girl and Tide. Other big spenders were McDonald's, $37.7 million; Johnson and Johnson; $36.1 million; Kraft Foods, $24.5 million; Walt Disney, $24 million; General Electric, $23.2 million; AT&T Inc., $22.9 million; and Wal-Mart Stores, $22.6 million.
Among product categories, automotive led the way with $187.4 million in ad spending. That was followed by quick service restaurants, $79.1 million; motion pictures, $75.4 million; and department stores, $72 million.
Discussion Question: How substantive an understanding do retailers and consumer goods manufacturers have of African American consumers? How valuable do you think media usage research into the African American demographic is for retailers and consumer brands? Does the degree of assimilation of African Americans into American society make this media understanding any less important?