Media Analyst Lee Westerfield lowers his projections for overall ad growth in 2008, but expects major gains for Internet search engines.
The outlook for 2008 advertising is not very bright if you’re in the newspaper or radio business. On the other hand, if you’re Yahoo or Google, prepare yourself for another banner year, something like a 35 percent increase in ad revenue.
Those are the November 2007 projections made by Lee Westerfield, the senior media analyst for BMO Capital Markets, where they watch such trends.
MediaWeek reported that Westerfield has revised his 2007 growth projections from 3.4 percent to 2.6 percent.
His 2008 forecasts:
- Overall advertising will increase 3.7 percent, a revision from earlier projections calling for a 4.3 per increase;
- Both radio and newspaper advertising will slow down 15-to-20 percent;
- Television advertising will "hold its own."
The percentage declines do not seem like industry-killers, but they take on more significance when converted into millions or billions of dollars.
Westerfield attributed the relatively low projections to problems in the auto, home improvement and financial services categories.
