I’m sure this is good news for all. We’ve certainly noticed a marked increase in advertising briefs and planning well into next year and significant increases in budgets.

This article lays out Publicis’ prediction for growth next year:

PARIS — The chief executive of French advertising company Publicis Groupe SA on Tuesday predicted that the company would start growing organic revenue by the middle of next year because advertising markets have started a gradual recovery.

The owner of Saatchi and Saatchi posted a 7.4% drop in third-quarter organic revenue, which excludes the impact of any acquisitions and disposals and currency moves. The figure was an improvement on the 8.6% decline in the second quarter.

Advertising world-wide has been in decline since the summer of 2008 as major companies cut ad spending in response to the credit crunch and the economic downturn. However, Publicis CEO Maurice Levy said Tuesday that the market hit a bottom in June and that the recovery seen in the third quarter should continue into the fourth quarter and beyond.

“The advertising market has stopped deteriorating during the summer and a slow and gradual recovery is under way,” he told reporters. The company is looking for acquisition targets to continue growth in China, as well as opportunities to strengthen its position in India, he added.

Read the full story here:

For those of you who haven’t read the latest copy of AdMedia yet (you should go and buy a copy :) here’s an article I’ve put together on behalf of the IAB NZ and Adhub.:

There’s been a lot of doom and gloom over the global recession but despite this, digital media businesses are growing … through the roof.

Starbucks’ Facebook profile has 3,847,224 fans. That’s not far off the total population of NZ and certainly the largest chunk of our spending population who’ve visited its pages and refer friends, participate in polls, pass on big ups or the wackness.

Tom Osborne of Wag the Dog believes the fundamental difference to marketing in 2009 has been the shift to conversations supporting placements. “Much of what we’ve done for 2degrees Mobile is dialogue driven – you have to understand and embrace communities,” he says.

According to Osborne, the average kiwi has 120 friends on Facebook so it doesn’t take a lot of referring individuals to create a big impact. “The key learning for us has been to build the community before you try to sell them on your product or service. If you start selling your widget, coupons or polls too early you can miss the bigger upside of a large base of fans.”

“It used to be that a great idea would do the job; nowadays the great idea merely earns you the right to have a conversation. It’s the conversations that drive reach and increase frequency of your message or brand.”

There’s no question that online media has been the winner of the recession, with new shops like Wag the Dog and iProspect popping up within the last six months and large accounts like BNZ and TVNZ jumping ship – in part for perceived benefits to their digital strategies.

The most recent and significant investment from most serious media agencies has been search. All the big shops have search specialists beavering away like counterfeiters printing currency. But it’s not greenbacks they’re concerned with, it’s search terms and consultancy around optimisation for client sites better found by the mighty Google.

“Search is just navigation,” Says Carat’s Ryf Quail, who’s also just joined the search stampede with iProspect. “Those that position search against display and brand advertising are missing the point – search is not an against medium, it’s a leverage medium.”

Read the rest of this article.

Coffee Cupid

Check out our latest integrated campaign on getFrank. If you’ve got a special someone to impress or you just want a free coffee – give it a try. This is a great example of the types of targeted integration we can implement across our sites.

http://www.getfrank.co.nz/coffee-cupid/