PND Ads: Surge Not Over Yet

By Joseph Palenchar On Dec 15 2008 - 8:00am

Retail advertising of personal navigation devices (PNDs) surged again in 2008 in newspaper ads and newspaper inserts, IFR Monitoring data shows, but the surge in the number of advertised brands is over.

PNDs boosted their appearances in retailers' newspaper advertising by 71 percent to 86,870 placements for the 12 months ending September 2008, IFR found. That followed a 132 percent surge in the year-ago 12-month period to 50,765, according to IFR, which tracks advertised pricing, promotion and placement of products by more than 2,000 retailers across the U.S. and Canada in ROP newspaper ads and newspaper inserts.

The company also found that the total number of advertised brands remained stable at 45 during the 12-month period, down by only one brand, after a year-ago surge to 46 brands from 25.

Retailers also advertised a lot more SKUs compared to the year-ago period. The number of SKUs rose to 258 from the year-ago 196, which itself was up from 125 in the prior 12-month period ending October 2006.

As in the previous 12-month period, the 10-most-advertised brands accounted for more than 90 percent of the SKUs advertised. (See table at left.) Their combined percentage rose slightly to 94.3 percent from the year-ago 93 percent.

The top four most-advertised brands, as in the previous 12-month period, accounted for the overwhelming share of advertised models. The top brands, in order, were Garmin, TomTom, Magellan and Mio, and their combined share of advertised SKUs grew to 85 percent from the year-ago 83.6 percent, IFR found.

Among the top four advertised brands, all gained share with the exception of Garmin, whose share slipped to 38.5 percent from 41.8 percent. Tom Tom's share grew to 22.1 percent from 21.9 percent, while Magellan's share grew to 18.6 percent from 15.2 percent. Solo digits were posted by Mio, whose share rose to 5.8 percent from 4.7 percent.

Brands posting the most dramatic gains in ad share included Navigon, which rocketed to fifth place with 2.7 percent share from out of nowhere, IFR found. Nextar also gained, with 2.5 percent compared to the year-ago 0.4 percent. And Sony's share went from zero to 1.4 percent. Harman Kardon went to 1 percent from 0.2 percent.

Among the 10 most-advertised SKUs during the 12-month period (see second table), the Garmin name appeared on four models, with TomTom also appearing on four and Magellan's name appearing on two. The same three brands also dominated the top 25 most-advertised SKUs for the period, with Garmin's name appearing on 10, TomTom's on eight and Magellan's on six. The brand with a solo SKU in the top 25 was Mio. The results were similar in the year-ago period.

In other findings, IFR reported that the 210-most-advertised SKUs in September 2008 carried entry-level to high-tier price points ranging from $148.88 to $449.99.