2008 Marketing Facts from AMA, MarketingPower.com, did you know?

Top 10 U.S. Sponsors for 2007:

1. Anheuser-Busch (#1 in 2006, too) – wonder what will happen with the InBev purchase?

2. PepsiCo (#2 in 2006, too)

3. Coca-Cola (up from #4 in 2006)

4. Nike (up from #4 in 2006)

5. GM (dropped from #3 in 2006) – and surely will drop even more?

6. Miller Brewing (same position as in 2006)

7. AT&T (didn’t even make the list in 2006)

8. Sprint Nextel (up from #9 in 2006)

9. Toyota-USA (didn’t even make the list in 2006)

10. Ford (dropped from #8 in 2006) – and surely will drop even more?

Extrapolating from 2007’s global online population brings us estimates through 2012 (that’s only 4 years away from now!) of well over 2 Billion. Yes, that’s with a B. Asia and the Pacific Rim are now and will continue to dominate with close to 45% of users on the world-wide web. North America trails with less than 15% of users. The biggest growth % seen will be in the Middle East/Africa by doubling their population of users.

What is the most local of all advertising media? Radio. Nearly 71% of the $21Billion spent in radio in 2007 was for local spots.

And how did all media ad spending fair? Comparing the same time period from 2006 to 2007, all ad spending was relatively flat. The biggest losers? TV and newspapers. Their losses were felt as gains in ad expenditures in magazines, radio, outdoor and the internet.

Newspapers overall have lost big numbers (nearly 8% overall) within national and retail ad spending; the biggest of all in classifieds (16.5% over 2006 numbers). Online newspaper ad spending helped make up some of the loss by growing 18.8%.

Who were the media spending winners over the last 5 years (2002-2007)? Alternative marketing with gains of 17.5% overall. Online and mobile (+31.4%) includes search and lead generation, online classified/display ads, e-media, online video and rich media, internet yellow pages, consumer-generated ads. Interactive marketing (+28.6% includes e-direct marketing, WOM (word of mouth) marketing and e-custom publishing. Entertainment and digital out-of-home advertising (+15%) includes local pay TV, VOD (video on demand), interactive TV (ITV) and digital video recorder (DVR) ads, videogame and home advertising and satellite radio advertising. Branded entertainment marketing (+13.4%) includes event sponsorship and marketing, paid product placement, advergaming and webisodes.

Where is the biggest advertising spending growth in format? Video and rich media (including sponsorships, lead generations/referrals and email embedded ads.

Online social network spending is the most explosive category by far logging a +163% gain over 2006, projected to “taper off”, and I use that term loosely) in the next 5 years to approximately $2.6Billion (again, with a B). Currently, MySpace leads the way with over ½ of all social network ad spending. Rival Facebook enjoys approx 18% of the ad market.

OUtdorr advertising increased 7% from 2006 to 2007 with eh biggest gains felt in catergories of Comunications (+35.7%), automotive “other” (+11.8%) and insurance/real estate (+9.2%).

Overall TV ad revenue dropped in the same time period at a rate of 4.4%, the biggest loss felt in local broadcast TV of 9.5%.

And, our good friends at Technorati tracked the staggering growth of the blogosphere over the last 5 years. Blogs have exploded from a modest 300,000 in Apr 03 to nearly 113 Million in Apr 08.

Consumer-facing companies in the webspace have connected with millions of consumers: social network Facebook, micro-blog communications tool Twitter, media voting site Digg and free community provider Ning. Not one can compare to the consumer interface created by Google, though.