Ad spending up for children's TV

[Guest guest]

The reformulation of sugary, fatty and high-sodium foods aimed at kids that

began in 2007 was supposed to be a wake-up call to the kids media

marketplace. The changes to the products, resulting from years of

watchdog-group scrutiny and FCC recommendations, sent shockwaves through the

sales departments of Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network and Disney as they

scrambled to work with their partners to find new ways to market their

products.

Four years later, a lot of that ad money has come back -- even as sales of

some affected products have slowed.

The kids' upfront finished as much as 5% up last year, compared to 2009, at

just under $1 billion, on the strength of strong spending among toys, movie

studios and renewed spending from packaged-food and quick-service restaurant

advertisers. This year's kids upfront is expected to increase another 3% to

5% based on early estimates from multiple executives. Driving that

resurgence is a new focus on targeting parents vs. kids, and a commitment to

marketing healthful products.

As part of the Children's Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative, issued

by the Council of Better Business Bureaus, 17 advertisers, from Burger King

to Kraft to Mars, have pledged to improve the health content of their

products and change their marketing strategies. Elaine Kolish, VP-director

of the CFBAI, said advertisers were in 2007 required to promote healthy

products in at least 50% of their media targeted to kids, but all the

participating marketers ended up promoting those products in all their kids'

ad time. In January 2010 that became an official requirement. Additionally,

Coca-Cola, Cadbury, Mars and Hershey's have all committed to not advertising

at all to children under 12.

Food ads are certainly less frequent than non-food ads in an informal media

study conducted by the CFBAI last spring. During a 38-hour review of kids'

programming, only 24% of all ads were for food-related products, the rest

were for non-food products like games and movies, which were twice as

prevalent.

" Our goal is not to reduce the number of ads to kids but to shift the

content [of the ads], " Ms. Kolish said. " Companies have had to discontinue

some products, reformulate others and innovate new products once budgets

became effective. It's led to reductions in calories, salt and trans fats. "

*But ads for unhealthful foods haven't disappeared entirely, said one kids'

cable sales executive. " The loophole is they still advertise those brands,

they just do it in different places, " the executive said, noting that

daytime broadcast programming has benefitted from such shifts. " High-sugar

cereal, high-sodium lunches, those products' budgets have only been

redirected, not cut. " The idea is to target moms -- and the kids who might

be watching with them. *

A kids' media buyer cautioned that such shifts haven't always made the most

economic sense. " We've experimented with taking kids' advertising and

running it against moms. That was not particularly effective. The question

was, 'Can we do this inexpensively as opposed to making entirely separate

creative to talk about kids' products?' And the answer to that was no, " the

buyer said.

As parents have been identified as the new target, kids' cable networks have

added more prime-time programming that appeals to both kids and parents to

avoid further ad-related scrutiny and capitalize on the high volume of

co-viewing that occurs around the 8 p.m. hour. Nickelodeon recently expanded

its Nick At Nite lineup to include an additional hour of family-friendly

reruns and original series such as " Glenn D.D.S. " The programming

block, sold separately from Nickelodeon, posted a 13.6% increase in revenue

in 2010, according to Kantar Media, and saw a 40% bump in revenue among

non-endemic advertisers.

Cartoon Network's college-targeted Adult Swim also added more prime-time

hours, and saw a 9.2% bump in measured ad spending in 2010, according to

Kantar. Discovery Communications and Hasbro's The Hub launched last fall

with prime-time reruns of shows like " Happy Days " and " The Wonder Years, "

and has found some early success in reaching packaged-food and gaming

advertisers.

Jim , Nickelodeon's exec VP-360 brand sales, told Ad Age last spring

that movies and entertainment had replaced food as the network's No. 2 ad

category. And indeed, only two food clients made up its top 10 biggest

spenders in 2010. General Mills was No. 1 with $74.18 million, an

essentially flat change in spending from 2009, while Kellogg Co. was No. 7

with $21.67 million, down slightly from the previous year, according to

Kantar Media. Nick At Nite, however, counts General Mills (No. 3), Kraft

Foods (No. 4), Nestlé (No. 8) and Hershey Co. (No. 10) among its top

clients, with boosts in spending among many.

Cartoon Network has also been adding more live-action and sports programming

to its schedule to stay competitive in the ratings with its cable peers and

capture a higher volume of dollars from the movie-studio, video-game and

healthy-food marketers such shows attract. Its first awards show, the

sports-themed Hall of Game, attracted marketing partners like Pepperidge

Farm, Kids Foot Locker and Sears.

One kids' media buyer suggested the worst of the food-marketing cuts may be

over. " They're continuing to spend at or above the traditional levels. The

things that are impacting them now aren't so much kid advertising rules and

restrictions. Those have not been a big problem for the past couple years

now, " the buyer said, noting that food companies such as Kellogg and General

Mills have spent more time lobbying on their products' behalf in Washington.

" They're trying to do a better job of promoting the positive aspects of

their products to fend off any regulatory efforts that might be put in

place. "

http://adage.com/article/mediaworks/kids-tv-regulatory-challenges/149247/

--

Ortiz, MS, RD

*The FRUGAL Dietitian* <http://www.thefrugaldietitian.com>

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