• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, January 15, 2013

Last year was bad for print and this year won’t be much better, according to the Advertising Consensus Forecast from the World Advertising Research Center, which predicts further declines for both magazines and newspapers in the U.S. in 2013-2014.

Following a 4% decline in 2012, the WARC forecast sees U.S. magazine ad spending decreasing 4% in 2013 and 5.1% in 2014. That prediction looks rosy compared to WARC’s forecast for U.S. newspapers, where ad spending will fall 6.7% in 2013 and 8.4% in 2014. WARC estimates that U.S. newspaper ad revenues fell 7.2% in 2012.

U.S. newspapers’ ad revenues have declined every year since 2006, according to the Newspaper Association of America, tumbling from $49.4 billion in 2005 to $23.9 billion in 2011, the latest year for which full figures are available from the NAA. Combining the NAA figures with WARC’s forecast, total newspaper ad revenues will continue to drop from around $22.2 billion in 2012 to $20.7 billion in 2013 and $19 billion in 2014.

Meanwhile, according to the Publishers Information Bureau total magazine ad revenues (based on official rate cards) have declined from $27.5 billion in 2007 to about $21.1 billion in 2012. Combining these figures with the WARC forecast, revenues will sink to $20.3 billion in 2013 and $19.2 billion in 2014.

A separate forecast released by eMarketer in September sees smaller decreases in U.S. magazines’ print ad revenue over the next few years, with drops of 0.4% and 0.3% in 2013 and 2014, respectively. The consultancy estimated U.S. magazines’ total print ad revenues at around $15.2 billion in 2012. The same forecast has newspapers’ print ad revenues declining 6.1% in 2013 and 4% in 2014, to about $17.3 billion.