AdMall Forecast: Local Sales Managers Expect 2013 Revenue Gains

Close to 90% of local media sales managers are expecting increases in advertising revenue for 2013 compared to last year, according to the new 2013 AdMall Local Advertising Sales Forecast. Some 23% of local media sales managers expect increases in excess of 10%. Only 5.9% are projecting revenue declines, while 4.8% expect advertising sales to be flat. The report shows digital and mobile advertising are expected to be key drivers of the growth. More than 70% of account executives that sell traditional media such as radio, newspaper or television now also sell some form of digital advertising. The number of local media salespeople that sell search engine marketing, for example, is up 68.4% from last year and 28.5% from six months ago. Email marketing, mobile advertising and online video are also increasing in popularity among local media companies. "The expanding number of digital product offerings, many at lower price points than traditional advertising, means effective time management is critical for today’s media sales teams," says President/CEO of Sales Development Services C. Lee Smith. "Achieving growth from online and mobile is contingent upon a refocused go-to market strategy, more efficient sales processes and multi-dimensional training."

According to the 2013 AdMall Local Advertising Sales Forecast, nearly 70% of media sales managers believe that health care will be the hottest advertising category in 2013. The other main sectors of anticipated revenue growth in 2013 are expected to be retail, restaurants and automotive. Account executives rank competition from other local media (58.9%) and overcoming advertiser churn (50.6%) as their biggest challenges to growing sales in 2013. This reveals the difficulty of trying to bring in enough new business to compensate for revenue declines and lost accounts. These two concerns also rank among the top challenges for sales managers. "Growing competition and audience fragmentation have made it more difficult to maintain an advertiser base," says AdMall VP of Sales and Marketing Barry Shawgo. "Media outlets in some markets have already crossed the line where it's not possible to sell enough new advertising to offset advertiser churn. We see this as an alarming trend that media companies must address quickly."