HSBC leads the rebound in Hong Kong advertising
HSBC, the world's second-largest bank by market capitalisation, was Hong Kong's top advertiser last month, spending about $20 million promoting its retail and corporate services as the economy recovers.
The bank boosted its advertising expenditure 29.08 per cent last month.
Advertising spending as a whole rose 17.22 per cent to $1.34 billion from $1.14 billion last year, media monitoring house Admango said.
Standard Chartered was also among the 10 biggest spenders, using $9.35 million mainly to market the launch of its new credit cards.
'Hong Kong's banks had either cut or held their advertising budgets in the previous quarters,' Admango director Jennifer Ma said. 'But they are back ... backed by an improved economy.'
Advertising expenditure by banking and investment services touched its high for the year last month, reaching $84.19 million. This represented growth of 14.62 per cent compared with the previous year.
Meanwhile, i-Cable Communications saw its advertising spending account for 5.15 per cent of the industry total, up from 2.51 per cent a year ago. This compared with Television Broadcasts, whose share dropped from 28.12 per cent to 26.84 per cent. Asia Television's share also fell from 9.73 per cent to 9.04 per cent.
Admango expected further growth in advertising spending this month and next after seeing a 15 per cent increase in three months.
