• Marketing Charts, Friday, September 21, 2007 11 AM

While ad-trackers, including TNS and Nielsen, have shown downturns in spending this year, at least one industry watcher sees a more bullish trend. Eighteen media categories that span both traditional and nontraditional outlets should increase 3.1% in 2007, according to Jack Myers Media Business Report.

While down from his original forecast of 3.7% last December, Myers still sees overall spend up 6.9% in 2008 and 3.1% in 2009. "Reports from other forecasters suggesting the U.S. ad industry may be entering a recessionary period are grossly misleading because they focus exclusively on traditional media, such as television, newspapers and radio, and fail to pick up on the shift of marketers' budgets to untracked categories," he says.

He adds that nontraditional media was up nearly 23% in 2006 to $25.2 billion, 11.3% of the total. That category, which includes cinema, mobile, videogames, branded entertainment, satellite radio and custom-publishing advertising, is set to grow 20.3% in 2007, 18.4% in 2008 and 18.5% in 2009, Myers projects. At the same time, traditional media categories will be up less than 1% in 2007, but get a boost from political ads next year to 5.2%. Knocking out online, though, means revenue will be down 0.6% in 2007.

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