• by Ken Liebeskind , July 10, 2002

One wonders what the advertising market was like 50 years ago when Robert Coen began his career as a prognosticator. Today, Coen, senior VP/director of forecasting at Universal McCann, only looks back a dozen years in the numbers he presents. We see huge dips in 1990 and 1991 during the recession followed by steady gains the rest of the decade until the peak year of 2000, when mammoth gains occurred. Last year, the bottom fell out with heavy losses, but this year a slow recovery is in progress, which Coen sought to document in his mid-year update in New York on Wednesday.

Coen revised the 2002 forecast he made last December, calling for a 2.1% increase in ad spending, compared with his prediction for a 2.4% increase in December. When asked why his projection was lower when other forecasters are painting a brighter picture, he said, "In December I was too optimistic. Now I'm too pessimistic."

Coen reviewed his forecasts for individual media, calling for a 7% jump in network TV revenue, after a 2% drop last year; a 5% jump in national spot TV, following a 20% dip last year; a 13.8% drop in cable TV, after 7.9% growth last year; an 8.9% drop for syndicated TV; 1% growth for radio; a 7.6% decline for magazine; and a 3.7% drop for newspaper.

Coen also looked at individual product categories, focusing on the biggies, including automotive, which will rise 5% with growth in TV but drops in magazine; food, which will drop 5% with heavy TV losses and magazine gains; movies, which will jump 11%, with heavy gains in TV and magazine losses; and drugs, which will drop 9% with TV losses and a slight magazine gain.

In brief comments on dot.com advertising, Coen said, "the shake out is over" after drops of 43% last year and 34% this year, following a gain of 357% in 2000.

Finally, Coen offered the first projection for 2003, calling for 5.5% growth and $236.2 billion in spending.

Coen's numbers were anything but emphatic. They suggest very little change for the rest of the year and slim recovery. His comments on direct mail advertising are perhaps emblematic of the whole ad market. The category was decimated by the anthrax scare, but the fact that anything is being mailed now is pretty good news, he said.