A new market study reports television advertising had a strong first quarter and local stations generating 20% gains over previous year.  This is a strong reversal of the double-digit declines that first hit local TV in the fourth quarter of 2008 and extended through most of 2009 and may spell trouble for political advertising this season.

The Television Bureau of Advertising, which reported the results based on data obtained from Kantar Media, said that "virtually every local TV advertising category witnessed improved results -- as did individual top marketers."

So what does this mean for the balance of this year?  It means the "lowest unit charge" rates won't be as low, demand for spots is higher, and inventory control by stations will be critical to political ads making on the airwaves (if you're a non federal candidate and down ballot.) This is something we touched on in an earlier article.

In reality, stations loaded up early with bargain rates not expecting the surge that they saw - things like a 75% increase in auto dollars, 25%  increase in financial advertising, or the battle between telecom giants which poured in excess of $369 million into the local spot market. And when the surge came they sold the spots over and over again leaving them piles of spots to make good in the future. - a failure to properly control inventory.

Of course not every market will present problems, but many will.  Make sure that you have conversations with your buyers "early and often" as you prepare your ad campaigns.

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