The last 12 months weren't pretty for multicultural advertising budgets.

According to a Nielsen analysis of multicultural advertising in traditional media outlets, such as television, radio and print media, dollars invested in Spanish-language marketing efforts between June 2008 and July 2009 totaled roughly $5.5 billion.

The figure represents a 6.3 percent decline from a year earlier, and is of little surprise to CMOs who have been active in the U.S. Hispanic marketplace.

Yet as Spanish-language ad spending slumped, the percentage dip for African-American advertising was even more pronounced. According to Nielsen, African-American ad spending slid 9.6 percent between June 2008 and July 2009, to $1.8 billion.

The dip in advertising budgets targeting black consumers continues a trend that saw an 18 percent decrease in dollars (to $23.4 million) from McDonald's, when comparing the first nine months of 2008 to the same period in 2007.

In that same time frame, Procter & Gamble Co. - the top African-American advertiser - lowered its ad spending for the multicultural segment by 10 percent, to $63.3 million.

Through July of this year, African-American budgets have slumped across the board.

Automotive's African-American media budget saw a 33.5 percent plunge compared to the previous 12 months, to $82.6 million. Yet, the category continued to top all others.

By comparison, Spanish-language media saw an even greater loss in automotive dollars. From the third quarter of 2008 through the second quarter of 2009, budgets from manufacturers and dealer associations slid by 40.4 percent, to $381.7 million.

Among the more striking differences seen between African-American and Hispanic budget trends:

• Quick-service restaurants saw a 6.4 percent drop in their total African-American ad budgets, to $72.4 million. At the same time, quick-service restaurants saw a 10.1 percent rise in their Hispanic ad budgets, to $322.8 million.
• Department stores lowered their African-American ad dollars by 20.1 percent, to $62.3 million; retailers trimmed their Hispanic advertising budgets by just 2.8 percent during the period, to $291.2 million.
• Wireless telephone services chopped their African-American targeted advertising budgets by a combined 16.7 percent, to $50.6 million. In the Hispanic market, advertising budgets increased by 4.8 percent, to $334.8 million.

Auto insurance companies lowered their Spanish-language marketing dollars by 4.1 percent, to $124.1 million; the category is not in the top 10 on the African-American side. Another trouble spot for African-American marketers is in the feature film category - motion picture distributors spent 20 percent less ($53.3 million) on advertising targeting African-Americans, a large segment of the cinema-going public.

In fact, there's a legitimate growth giant in the Hispanic market that's seen its advertising and marketing dollars increase incrementally in recent years. Legal Services businesses - including attorneys and law firms - has become one of the fastest-growing components to the total number of dollars spent on Hispanic marketing each year. The category enjoyed 34.2 percent year-over-year growth during the period - to $114.9 million.

For those in the legal profession, winning Hispanic business has become a multimillion-dollar endeavor. Through the first half of 2009, six of the top 10 legal services business advertising in the traditional Spanish-language media tracked by Nielsen Monitor-Plus invested more than $1 million in targeted advertising (Hispanic Market Weekly Industry Snapshot 10/29/2009).

Overall, the 6.3 percent dip in ad dollars is primarily due to a 13.2 percent fall in spot television ad dollars, to $1.52 million. A continued slump at newspapers in both the Latino and non-Hispanic markets attributed to a 20.3 percent slide in Spanish-language local newspaper budgets, to $88.6 million.

But network and cable television saw "just" a 2 percent decrease in ad dollars, to $3.2 billion.

With the 2010 FIFA World Cup on Univision and shoulder programming already being pitched to clients, a turnaround in media spending could be just months in the making.

For African-American marketers, a turnaround in advertising budgets could be longer and more difficult. Census 2010 is likely to show continued Latino population growth across the U.S., leading marketers to invest in Spanish-language advertising rather than targeting African-Americans.

In the African-American marketplace, spot radio commands the most dollars, followed by cable television thanks to networks such as BET and TV One. But spot radio dollars fell 6.7 percent between the third quarter of 2008 and the second quarter of 2009, to $794.1 million. In the top 10 markets, Arbitron's switch to electronic measurement with the Portable People Meter (PPM) will likely result in a further drop in those dollars, as Urban formats have not performed as strongly under the new measurement than in diary-based methodology.

While Hispanic radio broadcasters have also expressed frustration with the PPM, Spanish-language ad dollars slipped by 3 percent during the period, to $569 million.

Thus, with Spanish-language television the clear driver for Hispanic media, a recovery will come faster - and perhaps easier - than for African-American media.