• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, January 10, 2012

Citing the ongoing financial crisis in the Eurozone, WARC this morning issued a downgrade to its 2012 global ad spending forecast. The forecast, which is based on a weighted average of a consensus of leading industry forecasters, was lowered 0.9 percentage points to an annual growth rate of 5.4%.

“In 2012, Germany, France, Italy and Spain are expected to be the worst performers of the 13 key markets covered by the forecast,” WARC Data Editor Suzy Young wrote in the update, adding that, “Spain's ad market is predicted to fall by 2% this year, a significant downgrade (down 4.5 points) since August. This follows an estimated drop of 5.1% in 2011 and is reflective of the nation's troubled economic situation.”

Russia actually takes the worst downgrade since August, dropping 5.9 points, but nonetheless still is projected to rise 14.0% during 2012. The other BRIC nations also were downgraded, but all are projected to have double-digit percentage gains this year.

North America is relatively stable, according to the WARC update. Canada has not been changed from its August projection of 4.3% growth, and the U.S. was taken down 1.3 points to a new projection of a 3.3% gain for 2012.

The only market to receive an upgrade was Japan, which the WARC consensus now projects will expand 2.6% in 2012, an expansion of 0.4 points from August.

“Only Japan has seen its outlook for 2012 improve in the last few largely because its economic recovery from last year's tsunami occurred more rapidly than many analysts anticipated,” Warner noted.

Among individual media, global online ad spending is expected to record the strongest increase in 2012 ( +14.3%).

The U.S. presidential election and the Olympics are expected to boost TV ad spending a “substantial” 6.3% this year, Warner noted, adding that radio (+3%), cinema (5.7%) and out-of-home (+5.6%) “should also see growth, but newspapers (-0.8%) and magazines (-0.3%) are predicted to record slight declnes."