15-Year Old Bank Intern Causes Stir With Report; IPA Believes Worst May Be Over For UK Ad Market

A research note written by a fifteen year old bank intern has media executives and analysts debating how teens consume media. In the note the teenager pointed out that his peers do not use twitter, have little time to watch TV and never read newspapers. The FT has more on the story:

Teenagers do not use Twitter,” he pronounced. Updating the micro-blogging service from mobile phones costs valuable credit, he wrote, and “they realise that no one is viewing their profile, so their tweets are pointless”.

His peers find it hard to make time for regular television, and would rather listen to advert-free music on websites such as Last.fm than tune into traditional radio. Even online, teens find advertising “extremely annoying and pointless”.

Their time and money is spent instead on cinema, concerts and video game consoles which, he said, now double as a more attractive vehicle for chatting with friends than the phone.

Mr Robson had little comfort for struggling print publishers, saying no teenager he knew regularly reads a newspaper since most “cannot be bothered to read pages and pages of text” rather than see summaries online or on television.

The Guardian reports on a recent IPA report, which suggests that confidence is returning to the ad market. The number of companies cutting their marketing budget has fallen for a third consecutive month, and many surveyed for the report are seeing tentative signs of recovery:

Green shoots are sprouting in UK advertising and marketing budgets, according to the latest Bellwether report by trade body the IPA.

For the first time in more than a year, UK advertisers reported an improved outlook, indicating that the recession may have reached its nadir in the first quarter.

The report found that confidence was returning to the ad market, with the number of companies intending to reduce their marketing budgets falling for the third consecutive quarter.

Some 38% of companies reduced their marketing budgets in the second quarter, the report found, with just 10% revising budgets up. In the first quarter, 45% cut budgets, as did 49% in the last quarter of 2008.

A key indicator of green shoots was that, for the first time since the start of 2008, more companies reported a positive view of their financial performance than a negative outlook.