GroupM set to forecast 11% drop in ad spend

by Arif Durrani, mediaweek.co.uk 30-Mar-09, 11:06

LONDON - WPP's GroupM is to forecast advertising expenditure drops of 11% across all media in the UK in 2009, following a worse-than-anticipated first quarter that offers little reason to believe there will be a recovery later in the year.

The anticipated double-digit fall is the bleakest outlook yet for the UK and follows Aegis Media's Carat predicting drops of 7.1% last week.

The marketing and communications group, led by chief executive Martin Sorrell, is expected to dramatically revise its December advertising forecasts , which had tipped spend to drop 5.6% in the UK this year, in a new report this week.

The figures will also confirm GroupM was overly optimistic about the UK's performance in 2008. The advertising market contracted 5.5% after a worse-than-expected fourth quarter, as opposed to the 3% the group forecast.

Like the predictions made by Carat, the GroupM report will show advertising in the UK is set to be among the worst hit by the global downturn.

Despite falls in most major markets, spend in the US, France, Germany and Japan is expected to hold up better than the UK.

However, GroupM futures director Adam Smith is also expected to announce a near 15% drop for advertising in Spain, while Russia is expected to lose almost a quarter of all its national ad spend in 2009.