Advertising budgets down worldwide in 2009 - except for the Internet

Advertising expenditure will fall by seven percent worldwide in 2009. This is according to a report published on Tuesday by the global media agency Zenith Optimedia. Advertising investments worldwide are expected to fall to a total of 453 billion dollars. An opposing trend is forecast for the Internet, but the agency also expects growth there to slow considerably. Advertising budgets are continuously shifting towards online relations. Budgets will grow by an average of 8.6 percent. In 2008, advertising managers were still enjoying growth of over 20 percent.
Television remains the dominant medium, although advertising revenues in the TV industry will fall by an estimated 5.5% in 2009. In relation to the other market segments, the TV market share is growing by 0.5 percent and is expected to reach 38.6 percent in 2009. Newspapers are successively confronted with declining revenues, the report continues. Due to the economic crisis, the media agency has had to revise its December 2008 forecasts significantly downwards. In December, the experts expected advertising revenues to fall by just 0.2 percent.

Europe hardest hit
The sharpest declines are expected in Central and Eastern Europe. North America, by far the largest advertising market, is expected to shrink by 8.3% in 2009. Last year, Zenith Optimedia was still assuming that the contraction of the advertising market could be neutralized by strong growth in the emerging markets. According to the latest publication, however, stagnation is now to be expected in the emerging markets.
Retail and insurance companies will continue to advertise their products at the same level. The automotive and aviation industries are among the problem children, the report continues. In the event of adequate crisis management and a sensible government debt policy, a recovery of the markets is realistic for 2010 and 2011. However, the growth rates have been revised downwards significantly.