BRIC Countries to Lead Adspend Growth

LONDON: The BRIC countries—Brazil, Russia, India and China—are expected to record the strongest adspend growth this year, according to World Advertising Research Center (Warc)’s latest international ad forecast.

Russia is expected to increase ad expenditure by 16.5 percent this year, followed by India with 14 percent, China with 11.5 percent and Brazil with 8.5 percent. In the face of a possible double-dip recession from the Eurozone debt crisis, Germany, France and Italy are now expected to record the worst year-on-year performances. Warc predicts only a 1-percent gain in adspend in Germany, 0.8 percent for France and a negative of 0.2 percent in Italy.

The U.K. is expected to see a bump of 4.2 percent, while the U.S. is forecast at 4.1 percent. Canada is predicted to increase 5.1 percent, and Australia by 3.5 percent.

The London Olympics and the European football championships have given a boost to European forecast growth rates. The year’s sporting events, alongside the U.S. presidential election, are expected to provide a significant increase to TV adspend. TV is predicted to increase its share of main media advertising across the 12 markets, growing 5.3 percent, ahead of the 4.5 percent predicted growth for the total for all media. Online adspending is expected to slow a big this year, to 12.6 percent from an estimated 16.6 percent in 2011.

Suzy Young, data editor at Warc, said: "With continuing debt worries affecting mature markets and knocking business and consumer sentiment, it is no surprise that 2012 adspend growth will come from emerging markets. Without the support from the presidential election and major sports tournaments, the outlook would have been even worse. But there are some bright spots in the data, with TV’s performance looking particularly encouraging."