According to a recent worldwide study by British media services organization Zenith Optimedia, global ad spend should drop to $444.8 billion this year, 9.9 percent less than last year’s $493.9 billion, dragged mainly by sluggish spending in developed markets.

Zenith Optimedia in its July report projected an ad spend decline of only 8.5 percent for the entire year, but downgraded its forecast in October due to weak first-half performance across all markets.

“However, this downgrade almost entirely relates to first-half activity Since then, improvements in economic confidence have been accompanied by positive signals from media owners that the downturn is bottoming out. We are still confident that the second half of the year will be much less painful for the ad market than the first half, and expect the market to hit bottom before the end of 2009,” the organization said. It related that the second half had started showing signs of recover3ç with declines already tapering off and ad spending starting to pick up again.

For 2010, the company saw the Asia-Pacific advertising market growing 3.3 percent to $107.4 billion vis-a-vis 2009 projections, much faster than the global average of only 0.5 percent.

By 2011, the market should start gaining steam, with Asia Pacific seen registering a growth of 6.5 percent to $114.5 billion. Globally, ad spend should increase by 4.3 percent to $465.9 billion. Developing markets were expected to grow 7.8 percent and 9.8 percent in 2010 and 2011, respectively.

Developed markets, on the other hand, were seen suffering a decline of 2.9 percent next year before rebounding by 1.5 percent in 2011. In terms of advertising medium, ZenithOptimedia projected that only the Internet would register growth for the year, at a rate of 9.2 percent.

It should account for 14.9 percent of the global advertising pie.
Newspaper and magazine ad• expenditure, on the other hand, was forecast to decline steadily over the corning years, dropping 25 percent and 28 percent below their respective 2007 peaks by 2011.