• by Steve McClellan  @mp_mcclellan, September 26, 2011

While ad spend growth in the U.S. has slowed this year, the good news is that there is still growth.

That's not the case in the UK, where a new report shows a drop in ad spending for the second quarter of 2011, said to be the first decline in ad expenditures in the market in over a year.

The report, from the UK's Advertising Association (AA) and World Advertising Research Council (WARC), indicates that UK ad spending fell more than 1% in the second quarter. As a result, the groups said they were downgrading their full-year ad-spend-growth estimate for the UK to 0.9% from the previously forecast 1.4%.

The report attributed the decline to several factors, including "the tough fiscal climate, challenging labor market and negative consumer sentiment."

AA and WARC did not release specific dollar figures, but the UK is expected to be one of the leading contributors to global ad spending growth between now and 2013, according to Publicis Groupe's ZenithOptimedia.

In July, the agency reported that the UK was the fifth-ranked ad market with spending of more than $18 billion in 2010. It will add another nearly $1.9 billion in spending by 2013, the seventh-largest contributing market to new spending, per ZO.

Suzy Young, WARC's top data analyst, stated: "While ad spend did contract year-on-year in the latest quarter, it's worth remembering that Q2 2010 yielded a particularly strong [+11.9%] result, making comparisons particularly unfavorable."

The UK report was issued a month after WARC downgraded its global ad-spending growth forecast for 2011 to 4.4% from the previous 5.1% prediction released in April. It cited the deteriorating economic outlook. The August report did not mention the UK, but said that Italy's ad expenditures would be down about 1% for the year.

The second-quarter UK report found that TV spending was down over 2% and print was down nearly 8%. On the plus side, radio was up over 7% and Internet spending was up over 6%.

In the U.S., year-to-year ad-spending growth in the second quarter slowed but didn't stop, according to both Nielsen and Kantar Media. Nielsen is now scheduled to issue its full first-half ad-spending report next week, which will show 3% growth for the second quarter, to approximately $26 billion -- down from 6% growth in the first quarter. A Nielsen spokeswoman confirmed the growth estimates.

Two weeks ago, Kantar reported second-quarter U.S. growth of 2.8%, down from 4.4% growth in the first quarter.