The end of the year brought a flurry of predictions about ad sales in 2010, and already one of those forecasts has been revised to show a slightly more optimistic outlook. Interpublic’s Magna unit (via MediaBuyerPlanner) has upgraded their official estimate for 2010, and now expect ad revenues to be flat for the year, not down 1.3% as previously predicted.
These numbers are ‘normalized,’ meaning they don’t include advertising for this year’s political races or the upcoming Olympics. Based on this revised outlook, Magna believes U.S. media suppliers will generate $161 billion in this ‘normalized’ ad revenue. Magna estimates that overall ad spending was down 15.5% in 2009.
Predictions by media:
- National online spending +4.0%
- Local online spending +3.7%
- Direct mail +4.1%
- Newspaper -10.7%
- Magazines -7.3%
While those number for newspaper and magazines seem bad, they’re much better than the 27.2% drop for newspapers and 19.6% drop for magazines in 2009.
Magna also predicts that the first quarter of 2010 will be the last quarter of overall decline.
Wednesday, Jan 20, 2010
Michelle OBrien