Global advertising spending growth/fall in 2009

Interesting on the FT.

Zenith Optimedia (Publicis) forecasts a growth in global advertising of 4% in 2009, and 0.6% in US, while Barclays Capital forecasts a fall of 5.5% of spend in US.

I am with Barclays. Advertising will go down in 2009, and not only in US. I expect it to be down worldwide. It’s a cyclical business, and the economy is not in good shape. I expect the budget migration from offline to online to continue, but hardly any net new money to the whole industry for next year.