Rival media agencies Magna Global and ZenithOptimedia released advertising spend forecasts for 2015 today, with both agencies expecting global industry growth to slow next year.
ZenithOptimedia, which calculates industry growth using ad spend by medium, predicts expenditure to grow by 4.9 per cent next year, down slightly from the 5.1 per cent expected in 2014 when major sporting events such as the World Cup, Winter Olympics and the US mid-term elections boosted spend.
Magna Global, which uses media owner revenue data to make its forecasts, reckons the industry will grow by 4.8 per cent in 2015, down from the 5.5 per cent rise expected this year, with ongoing problems in Ukraine and elsewhere in Europe holding the global ad economy back.
In Asia Pacific, ad spend will grow by 6.4 per cent next year, Magna Global reckons, with Latin America the only region growing faster.
China is expected to grow by 8.6 per cent in 2015, although Magna has cut its forecast by two to three percentage points given the country’s cooling economy.
The most exciting two countries in APAC for advertising growth next year are post-election democracies India and Indonesia, the agency predicts.
India is expected to grow fractionally faster this year than last, with 13.3 per cent growth to come in 2015. In 2014, India’s ad market grew by 13.2 per cent, according to Magna Global.
Indonesia, which is the larger of the two ad markets, will grow by 17 per cent in 2015 – much faster than the 13 per cent that Magna Global had predicted earlier this year. However, the country will have grown by 21.5 per cent this year, making it Asia’s fastest growing market.
The region’s second largest ad market after China, Japan, is expected to grow by 2.7 per cent next year, slower than the three per cent predicted for 2014.
ZenithOptimedia divides the region into three pieces – Japan, ‘advanced Asia’ (Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Singapore and South Korea) and ‘fast-track Asia’ (China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam).
The agency predicts the latter group will grow by between 10.3 per cent from 2014 and 2017 – faster than anywhere – whereas Japan is the world’s lowest growth ‘region’.
The media agency predicts that mobile will be the biggest contributor to global ad growth over the next three years.
In ZO’s predictions for the world order of ad markets, South Korea is expected to overtake Australia in the APAC pecking order over the next three years.
