TV ad spend to rise 2.5% this year

US ad spend will make a slow recovery this year, rising 1%, according to eMarketer.

Television is expected to make a better-than-average comeback and will surpass 2007 spending levels by 2012.

“TV advertising is on course to return to prerecession levels,” said eMarketer CEO and co-founder Geoff Ramsey. “While the growth of online advertising has been robust, it hasn’t stopped brand advertisers from keeping the bulk of their budgets flowing through TV sets.”

TV ad spend increased 9.7% in 2010 and is expected to grow 2.5% to $60.5 billion in 2011.

According to eMarketer, television retains the greatest share of US major media ad spend – at 39.1% this year. The report says it will continue to keep a steady hold at around 39% of the ad market.

As such, eMarketer says the increase in online ad spend (set to grow to 25.6% by 2015) will not come at the expense of TV but of other traditional media such as print.

eMarketer estimates that print, including newspapers and magazines, will lose an aggregate 9.3 percentage points of market share between 2009 and 2015 as spending, like consumption, shifts to the internet. Directories will see their share of all ad dollars more than halved over the same period.

Online already represents the second-biggest advertising medium after television, after surpassing print newspaper ad spending in 2010. By 2013, online ad spending will be greater than print spending on both magazines and newspapers combined.