• by Wayne Friedman , April 25, 2013

Global ad spending improved moderately in 2012 with telecommunications, consumer goods and entertainment categories, growing by mid-to-high single-digit gains.

Nielsen says the telecommunications advertising category climbed 7% last year -- and especially in Latin America (up 35.6%) and the Middle East/Africa (13.2% higher).

The "fast-moving" consumer-goods category rose nearly as much -- 6.8%, benefitting from an end-of-the-year fourth-quarter hike of 9.5%. Nielsen says the category is still the leader globally in share by a wide margin -- a 25.1% number.

Automotive advertising, which has a major share of U.S. advertising, is somewhat smaller on a global basis, with a 7.8% share, for the fifth overall category. It climbed up modestly last year -- 3.4%. But in the fourth quarter of 2012 it was down 2.8% from the same period the year before.

The second-biggest ad category by share -- entertainment advertising -- also rose modestly, by 3.1%. Other categories saw improvement: media advertising was up 5.8%; distribution channels, 5.3% higher; clothing/accessories, 2.8%; industry/services, 1.6%; and financial advertising, 0.9%.

Two categories headed south: health care, down 0.7%; and durables, off 2.1%, versus a year ago.

Entertainment advertising maintained a 11.8% share globally as the second-largest category share; industry and services had a 11.2% number; health care, 9.8%; automotive, 7.8%; media, 7.4%; telecommunications, 5.7%; financial, 5.3%; distribution, 5.2%; durables, 5.0%; and clothing/accessories, 3.5%.