ZenithOptimedia upgrades ad spend forecast

ZenithOptimedia forecasts that global advertising spends will grow by 0.9% in 2009. This is its first upgrade to 2010 in the past 18 months, which saw the worst decline in ad expenditure in modern times (-10.2%).

Although the global advertising marketing has stabilised, the recovery will however take some time, it said.

"After reaching its lowest point during the last two recessions, the global ad market recovered progressively over the course of the next three years, and we expect the current downturn to follow this pattern," it said it a report.

"However, we have raised our forecasts for growth in 2010 by 0.4 percentage points to 0.9%. This is our first upgrade to 2010 since we published our forecasts in June 2008, just before the full extent of the financial crisis became clear and the advertising downturn began. We expect the recovery to strengthen steadily as corporate and consumer confidence continue to improve, with 3.9% growth in 2011 and 4.8% growth in 2012," the report stated.

Many developing markets in Central and Eastern Europe and the rest of the world have suffered large shocks to their economies and ad markets.
"We think these shocks are one-off adjustments rather than deep-seated problems and expect healthy growth next year here too. In 2010, we forecast ad expenditure to grow 8.4% in Asia Pacific (excluding Japan), 8.1% in Latin America, 2.3% in Central & Eastern Europe and 7.0% in the rest of the world.”

ZenithOptimedia expects paid-search to grow 15% in 2009, driving 9% in overall internet advertising. The internet's share of ad expenditure globally could rise from 12.4% in 2009 to 16.2% in 2012, it said.

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