TOKYO: In a reflection of the modest economic recovery that is taking hold in Japan, ad holding company Dentsu has reported that adspend in the country increased 1.4% in 2013, its second successive year of growth.

Total adspend reached ¥5,976.2bn in 2013, boosted by a strong surge in demand during the second half of the year which Dentsu attributed to activity ahead of a rise in sales-tax in April 2014.

It also cited the positive impact of "Abenomics", the economic reforms advocated by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, for the improved outlook for the industry.

Spending on satellite media, at 9.6%, witnessed the strongest growth last year, followed by internet advertising (up 8.1%), which benefited from strong demand for performance-based advertising.

The 0.9% increase in TV adspend helped overall traditional media adspend to post a modest 0.1% rise to ¥2,782.5bn, but expenditures declined in newspapers (down 1.2%), magazines (down 2%) and radio (down 0.2%).

Advertising in promotional media, however, grew by 0.1%, exceeding previous-year levels for a second straight year.

Despite the overall spending increase, expenditures fell in 13 of the 21 industry categories – hobbies/sporting goods (down 5.8%), government/organisations (down 5.4%), energy/materials/machinery (down 5.1%) and distribution/retailing (down 5% because of cutbacks by large, high volume retailers).

Two industry categories reported impressive growth, however, with finance/insurance and food services/other services posting increases of 15.6% and 10.3% respectively.

Finance/insurance gained from advertising for direct-marketed insurance products and the Nippon Individual Savings Account (NISA) programme while food services/other services benefited from placements for legal services.

Warc's last International Ad Forecast, released in January, suggested that Japan would see all-media growth of 1.5% in 2013, rising to 2% in 2014.

Within these results, TV was forecast to increase by 1.6% in 2013, more than cancelling out annual declines for the print media and radio advertising. Internet was also predicted to rise 7.5% in 2013 and 7.7% in 2014.

Data sourced from Dentsu; additional content by Warc