Myers Advertising and Marketing Investment Forecast: Outlook to 2012

Jack Myers will be at the Association of National Advertisers Media Conference this week.

Tomorrow I issue my annual Myers Advertising and Marketing Investment Forecast. Focusing on twenty media and six marketing categories, the report includes 2008 full-year spending, 2009 and 2010 forecasts, plus 2006 and 2007 data for perspective. Order your free copy in easy to save PDF format at www.myersreport.com.

For the first time in more than 40 years, total marketing communications budgets will be flat or down for two consecutive years. Historically, even during recessionary periods, marketers have shifted budgets from advertising to sales promotion and retail allowances, and many marketers increased ad budgets in hopes of gaining share. In the recession of 2009, marketers will be making cuts almost across the board and will seek safe harbors and cost efficient alternatives.

Advertising and media companies should reevaluate their expectations if they are building business models around the assumption that their growth will normalize as the economy normalizes during the next 36-months. The danger to these companies is that they allow the worst economy in decades to camouflaging the transformational restructuring of the economic foundations of the media industry.

While economic realities are slowing the growth of emerging media at least they are growing, unlike traditional media. Newspapers, magazines and local television and radio will experience double-digit declines in 2009 and additional declines in 2010, coming off a flat to down year in 2008.

But even if the economy rebounds quickly, the same dynamics will be in place as marketers take a hard look at their total spending and review media and marketing alternatives on a line-by-line basis. As I have been predicting since the early 1990s [See my Classic Jack commentaries], we are in the dead center of a two-decade industry transformation that began with the launch of Google in 1998. It will be 2012 before the industry of the future - the 21^st Century model of the media and advertising industry - will begin to prosper. We can witness new foundations emerging without even looking that hard. Those who profit from the preservation of the old institutions misguidedly turn first to Wall Street and economic solutions rather than building new business models that focus on their customers and consumers.

The 2008-2010 Myers Advertising and Marketing Investment Forecast provides the data only, and suggests a negative economic outlook. I personally believe the media industry has never been stronger. Growth opportunities, as I have been reporting, are there for the taking. In the next three years, a new set of industry leaders - companies and individuals - will emerge.

Jack Myers is available to present his vision for the future of media, advertising and marketing at your company meetings and events. Contact jm@jackmyers.com