More news from the wild, wild world of advertising growth predictions. Like many forecasters, British media shop Carat is bearish on the advertising market, but unlike many in the space they are revising their online numbers upwards.
Today, Aegis media’s buying unit lowered their expectation for growth in the U.S. advertising economy to 2.1 percent. In March, they expected the market to grow 3.8 percent. They also lowered global growth to 4.9 percent from 6 percent.
But Carat found that advertising money is moving online faster than they originally predicted in March. The agency inched forward their forecasts for growth in that space to 23.7 percent from 23.3 percent for 2008 and their 2009 forecast from 17.8 percent to 18.6 percent.
Jerry Buhlmann, CEO of Aegis Media, says that the growth in online spending has less to do with additional consumers using online media than a shift in the industry towards ad buys that deliver measurable returns.
"With search now central to the planning and execution of any campaign, online media brings a greater level of accountability not just to itself but to TV, print and other forms of advertising," Buhlman said in the release. "This is why we are predicting further strong growth for Internet, even when advertisers are cautious in many of the other sectors."
Carat may be more bullish on online growth now, but their new forecasts are still comparable, or just slightly higher, than most predictions for the space. Last week, eMarketer announced plans to lower its online growth for 2008 “a few percentage points” from 23 percent. In July, Citigroup Inc. analyst Catriona Fallon cut her estimate of 2008 online ad growth to 16 percent from 22 percent, but as of September, Oppenheimer’s lowered estimate still had 2008 growth at 25 percent, and Lehman Brothers' media analyst Douglas Anmuth set his forecast for online growth to 23 percent in May.
