Zenith Downgrades ‘Overly Optimistic’ 2002 Forecasts
ABN AMRO this morning reports that Zenith will downgrade its ad spend forecasts for 2002 citing a ‘lag’ in US spending as adspend struggles to catch up with the improving economy. Zenith now believes that the advertising market will not recover until Q4 2002.
The new figures from Zenith compare with those from ABN AMRO who forecast that global ad growth for 2002 would be -1.4%. Zenith has revised it’s previous forecast of 0.8% for 2002 to -1.9%.
| 2002 Ad Spend Growth Forecasts (% growth) | ||||
| UK | US | Europe | Global | |
| Zenith Previous | 0.8 | |||
| Zenith New | -1.9 | -1.8 | -1.6 | |
| ABN AMRO | -1.7 | -1.6 | 1 | -1.4 |
| Source: Zenith/ABN AMRO, April 2002 | ||||
ABN said “…we have previously considered Zenith to be overly optimistic. We continue to believe that 2002 will be a second year of global decline, though not on the scale experienced in 2001.” Previous Zenith figures, released in December 2001, were widely considered to be an optimistic outlook for 2002 (see Forecasts).
ABN forecasts that the recovery will begin in Q3 when global ad growth will reach 1%.
