MediaRadar’s Recession Ready Weekly Advertising Overview: Hobbies & Travel Take Off

Week of January 16, 2023

This week MediaRadar reviewed ad buys from the week of January 2, 2023, and compared them to ads that ran the week of December 26, 2022.

While we highlighted four categories in this article, you can see the shifts in ad spend among all categories here. We look at Quarter-Over-Quarter (QoQ), Month-Over-Month (MoM) and Week-Over-Week (WoW).

Here is a full list of advertising changes by category. (Don’t worry, it’s ungated)

Here are some key weekly takeaways from advertising shifts that took place.

Travel advertising increased over 15% WoW. This represents over a $75mm investment during the first week of 2023. Nearly $60mm (~75%) of that spend was dedicated to lodging, cruise lines, and advertising placed by US tourism bureaus. Each of these categories increased at least 20% WoW. However, the US Tourism ads jumped nearly 150% WoW to attract visitors to their states. Florida, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania were the top states investing in ads to promote tourism.

During the week of January 2, 2023, ad spend in the Automotive category was about $100mm. This represents an increase of nearly 50% WoW. Automotive manufacturers advertised imports, SUVs, and pickup trucks this week. We saw imported automobiles increase 54% WoW to over $25mm. Advertising for SUVs was also over $25mm after a 125% WoW increase. While advertising for pickup trucks was under $15mm, this was the result of a nearly 100% WoW increase in ad spend.

B2B Industrial advertising increased over 50% WoW. Advertising investment exceeded $10mm during the week of January 2nd. Battery companies were big investors within the B2B electronics space this week placing over $2.8mm in ads. This represented a WoW increase of nearly 350%. As the Russia/Ukraine conflict continues, we saw defense advertising increase 650% WoW to about $2.1mm.

We saw advertising for Hobbies and Collectibles was up over 100% WoW. Hobby companies invested nearly $2mm in advertising during the first week of 2023. This is a common New Year’s resolution towards better mental health, so the increase in ad spend isn’t too surprising. It will be interesting to see the pattern of investment from this category throughout Q1.

For a full breakdown of which product categories are buying ads now, click here. The list is updated weekly – you can subscribe to receive it in your inbox.