New York -- National spot-cable ad revenues continued their
hot streak, closing out 1998 with a 39.4 percent gain to $337.4 million, the
Cabletelevision Advertising Bureau said.
That $95.4 million surge represented spot cable's
largest percentage gain since the CAB began tracking those results in 1993.
The hottest category by far last year was political,
followed by professional services, appliances/electronics and travel/recreation.
Ed Dunbar, vice president of ad sales at MediaOne Group
Inc. and chairman of the CAB's Committee on National Spot Advertising, said
spot's hefty growth was also attributable to such "continuing enhancements"
as digital ad insertion, interconnects and electronic data interchange.
Spot cable, which has been notching new highs since 1997,
soared by 53 percent in the second quarter of 1998 alone, which fueled the medium's
45 percent pace for the first half, the CAB reported last year.
