By Nicola Clark, Marketing, 04 November 2008, 4:32pm

Retail spend exits TV market

LONDON - TV sales houses are facing a tough Christmas trading period - with revenues down as much as 10% year on year as retailers put the brakes on their traditional festive spend.

Morgan Stanley estimates that the TV advertising market will be down between 8 to 9% in October and 9% in November.

Crucially the retail spend - which grew strongly between January and August - was in decline in November and while anecdotally agencies say late money has been coming into the market, analysts warn there is an underlying weakness in demand.

According to Morgan Stanley; ‘While ITV is likely to highlight the ‘cheapness' of its ad inventory ‘the issue is whether this is enough to attract advertisers in a sharp consumer downturn'.

ITV - which is releasing an interim management statement tomorrow - is at the sharp end of the market. Morgan Stanley estimates that third quarter ITV1 advertising revenue has fallen by 14% - including a 23% drop in September. While 9 month revenues will drop from an estimated £463m in 2007 to £442m in 2008 (-4.6%).