Ad spending apparently always falls in recessions.
That makes no sense, because what this chart shows isn't absolute ad spending, it's % spent on the various categories. In other words, for any given year, all the data points should add up to 100.
So if TV's share dropped in 1971, what other categories go the corresponding increase? It looks like maybe "direct mail" and a slight reversal in "newspapers", but are the bumps there enough to soak up the drop in TV's share?
And even if you accept that there was such a sudden drop in TV's share of advertising budgets in 1971, it still begs the question of _why_ there was such a drop? If it was related to the oil shock, how so? For example, were auto makers and dealers doing lots of advertising, which all dried up after the oil shock?
The last cigarette TV commercial (for Virginia Slims) was broadcast on the Johnny Carson Tonight Show at 11:59pm on January 1, 1971. It was expected to be devastating for the networks when tobacco ads were banned - but they did all right without them, in spite of immediately losing $220 million dollars a year in revenues.
Now they make more than that from anti-smoking ads!
I'm still dubious of the radio numbers, just as one of your other commenters pointed out, which makes me somewhat suspicious of the whole exercise...
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That makes no sense, because what this chart shows isn't absolute ad spending, it's % spent on the various categories. In other words, for any given year, all the data points should add up to 100.
So if TV's share dropped in 1971, what other categories go the corresponding increase? It looks like maybe "direct mail" and a slight reversal in "newspapers", but are the bumps there enough to soak up the drop in TV's share?
And even if you accept that there was such a sudden drop in TV's share of advertising budgets in 1971, it still begs the question of _why_ there was such a drop? If it was related to the oil shock, how so? For example, were auto makers and dealers doing lots of advertising, which all dried up after the oil shock?
I suspect a different cause for the 1971 drop: the banning of cigarette advertising on television, which took effect on January 2, 1971 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_advertising#United_States). Quite simply, the tobacco industry took their ad dollars elsewhere. According to http://www.tvparty.com/vaultcomcig.html :
I'm still dubious of the radio numbers, just as one of your other commenters pointed out, which makes me somewhat suspicious of the whole exercise...