Media research giant Nielsen Thailand reported that ad spending dropped only 0.4 per cent to Bt9.63 billion last month from the same month last year, compared to the plunge of 2.5 per cent in August.

Ad spending last month confirmed a positive sign after declining 5.4 per cent to Bt86.52 billion in the first three quarters from Bt91.44 billion in the same period last year.

Advertising via the digital TV, radio, cinema, outdoor, transit, in-store and online media channels enjoyed upward momentum.

Digital TV ads picked up by 5.6 per cent to Bt16.67 billion, outdoor ads by 34.2 per cent to Bt4.19 billion and online or Internet ads by 73.6 per cent to Bt1.33 billion.

It was a different story for newspapers, magazines, cable and satellite TV and the legacy players in terrestrial TV broadcasting.

Cable/sat TV ads seems to suffer the most, plummeting by almost 40 per cent to Bt2.85 billion, followed by magazines by almost 30 per cent and newspapers by 17.4 per cent.

Triluj Navamarat, president of the Media Agency Association of Thailand, said yesterday that local advertisers were likely to be more confident on spending their budgets in the remaining months.

Hopefully they could keep this up until the end of the year.

“Given this improving situation, we believe that this year’s advertising expenditures could end up with a drop of 5-6 per cent from last year’s figure,” he said.

For next year, the general election, which is expected to take place late in the year, would be a key stimulus for all advertisers to regain their confidence in using up their budgets in preparation for the new government.