Sponsor (1956)

Furthermore, continued population increases and continued growth in the percentage of people -with middle class incomes can be counted on — unle«» a number of hot-shot economists are way off the beam. Both of these trends are strategic buttresses supporting a continued boom in advertising. So. we have a figure of $13 billion for advertising in 1961. Next. SPONSOF examined television's share of all advertising expenditures. This rose from 1.1 to 11.195 from 1949 to 1955, an increase of 1.01)0' . Naturally, this kind of increase will not continue since the 1.1 ' '<_ represents a low base. However, we find that tv's share rose an average of 1.6 percentage points annuallv during the 1949-55 period. Projecting this rate of increase to 1961 would mean a 20% share of all advertising in 1961 or about S2.6 billion in t\ billings. Is it reasonable to assume that t\"» percentage share of advertising will continue to climb at the same rate? SPONSOR feels the answer must be no. that it cannot climb at the same fantastic rate as during the earlv \ears. So — and here's another assumption 30 YEARS AGO . . . we said: LIKE A SOW**^ ONE PIG yp^ ■^, _ #i A! Ipts Yoiill think that your account is the only one we have J Today, on our 30th anniversary, these words are truer than ever. Personalized service to both the advertiser and the Kansas farm families that we serve, has made WIBW the most powerful single selling force in Kansas. TOPEKA, KANSAS Ben Ludy, Gen. Mgr. WIBW & WIBW-TV in Topcka KCKN in Kansas City Rep. Capper Publications, Inc. Our 30th Year coming — it was assumed that t\'s share of all advertising would rise at half the rate it did in the past. This would mean a tv share of about 15rr or about $1,850 million in tv billings in 1961. But that's not all. There's color tv advertising costs to be taken into account, sponsor took a rough cut at this and could do no better than guess that color would cost advertisers an additional S100 million in 1961. Thus, sponsor's final figure for tv advertising five \ears hence is $1,950 million. (Note that T\B?s President Oliver Treyz predicts just about the same figure in the interview accompany ing this storj . ' Projecting color tv spending is particularly difficult because there is little in the past history of tv to go on. Such a projection must be based on estimated color set saturation, which makes the projection a guesstimate based on a guesstimate. This, however, is better than nothing. The two estimates of color set sales shown on page 33 mean that through 1961 land including 1955 sales I, total color set sales will be 19,550.000 in one case and 10.860,000 according to the lower estimate. This could mean about 18 million homes with color in the former estimate or 10 million in the latter. Since sponsor projects a total home figure of 54 million in 1961, the two estimates thus figure out to color saturation percentages of 33 and 18, respectively. Assuming (there we go assuming again 1 that color \\ill increase tv advertising costs 20r'< la figure often bruited about) and that color spending will be in proportion to the number of homes with color tv. this means color tv spending ma\ range between 870 and $120 million. So $100,000 conies out as a good. round figure. There are some sources that consider even the lower of the two color set estimates as optimistic. However, SPONSOR considers its projection of t\ ad spending on the conservative side and will stick to it. There are some things aboul tv that can't be reduced to figures. One of these is the fact of tv's newness. Because of this, l\ has even more impact than it sight-sound-motion parla) in< I i < ate. I here are plent) of lous) newspaper ads hut 1 pie don 1 pa) anj attention to them. Newspapers have been around too long. But, put on a lousj commercial and — brother! • • • L06 SPONSOR 17 SEPTEMBER 1956