Ad-to-Sales Ratio Benchmarks by Industry

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. - EntSun -- Schonfeld & Associates, Inc. has just released the 44th edition of its annual study, Advertising Ratios & Budgets. The report covers more than 2,400 individual public companies within 320 industries that spent on advertising in 2019. Over 280 non-U.S. headquartered firms are included in this year's study.

The study reports fiscal 2018 and 2019 advertising spending as well as revenue reported for 2019, advertising-to-sales ratios for 2019 and annual growth rates for ad spending and sales by company as well as industry so users of the study can monitor competition and evaluate their own marketing strategies.

Advertising by catalog and mail-order houses, the top spending industry, continued to increase robustly to over $22 billion and saw an increase of 18% in revenue. Online powerhouse Amazon continued to grow its advertising budget by over 36 percent. JD.com, China's biggest retailer as well as largest internet company, increased ad spending over 22 percent.

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The pharmaceutical industry reported spending exceeding $15 billion in 2019, essentially unchanged from 2018. Direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising is now the most common form of health information encountered by the public. The biotech industry with its involvement in personalized medicine grew its advertising spending by 23% to over $1.7 billion. As in other industries, use of social media has become integral to the marketing strategies of pharmaceutical companies.

Cable and pay TV services, such as Comcast, grew their ad spending over 7% to $13 billion. Large, diversified food companies spent a total of $1.9 billion in 2019, up one percent from 2018. The beverage industry spent $8.8 billion, a 9% increase, and saw an increase of almost 8% in sales. Beer companies spent $1.4 billion, a 2% increase. The 48 separate restaurant chains in the study spent a total of $3.3 billion in 2019, an increase of 5.2% from 2018.

Variety stores, led by Wal-Mart, increased their ad budgets 7.1% for a total of over $5.7 billion. Retail department stores, such as Macy's and Kohl's, spent over $3.1 billion in 2019, down a bit more than 1% from 2018.

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Advertising Ratios & Budgets is widely used for strategic planning by ad agencies, monitoring competitors, planning ad budgets, and identifying new business prospects. Information is grouped to show all competitors within an industry.

Copies of the 124-page study are available in PDF format for $ 395. Data files from Advertising Ratios & Budgets are also available for all companies and industries in Excel format. Five years of revenue, ad spending and ratio information is provided within the datafiles to allow for additional analysis. The 2020 edition of the PDF study along with Excel datafiles is $ 495. Contact Schonfeld & Associates, Inc., 1932 Terramar Lane, Virginia Beach, VA 23456. Call for more information: 800-205-0030 or visit the company's web site at www.saiBooks.com under the Area of Expertise: Advertising Spending.