Just a few months after predicting that US ad revenues would decline by 1.3% in 2010, Interpublic’s Magna unit has revised its projections, and now forecasts (pdf) that advertising revenues will be essentially flat this year, down just 0.1% from 2009.
In its January 2010 forecast update, Magna said it expects advertising revenue will be $161 billion, excluding the effects of the Olympics and local elections, MediaBuyerPlanner writes. Including Olympics and election spending, the US ad economy will rise 1.4%. The first quarter of 2010 will be the final quarter of decline during this most recent recession, according to Magna.
U.S. advertising fell 15.5% in 2009, Magna estimates.
Online to Have Strong Year
Magna predicts that online will have a relatively strong year. In 2010:
- Direct online ad spending will jump 12.2%
- National online ad spending will grow 4.0%
- Local online spending will grow 3.7%
Additionally, national TV is expected to rise 6.2%. The Olympics are expected to add $487.5 million to the US ad economy; election spending will add $2.743 billion.
Direct mail is expected to be up 4.1%. Print, however, will have another challenging year: newspapers will drop 10.7%, while magazines will slip an additional 7.3%. Those drops, however, are less significant than the plunges of 27.2% and 19.6% for newspapers and magazines respectively in 2009.
Magna also upgraded its longer-term forecasts, predicting that ad dollars will grow by a compounded annual growth rate of 2.3% between 2010 and 2015, up slightly from the 2.1% predicted in December.
