Man Bites Dog: Media Firm Raises 2008 Online Ad Estimate

Like just about everyone else making ad forecasts, Aegis media buying unit Carat has just lowered its’ estimates for 2008 advertising growth. But unlike just about everyone else, Carat raised its forecast for online advertising, noting that dollars are shifting online faster than they expected in March.

The overall U.S. advertising economy is looking weak to Carat, and they lowered their expectation for growth from the 3.8% predicted in March to 2.1%. They also lowered global growth to 4.9% from 6%.

But Carat found reason to be slightly more bullish on online advertising than they were in the spring, and bumped up their estimate for growth to 23.7% from 23.3% in 2008. It also raised its 2009 U.S. online forecast to 18.6% from 17.8%.

Part of this is Carat was conservative to begin with; the revised estimate is in-line, or slightly higher than most of the other predictions we’re tracking. But, Carat says

A rundown of ad market revisions so far:

• August 13: eMarketer plans to drop “a few percentage points” off its March estimate of 22.7% growth
• July 7: BMO Capital Markets cuts its 2008 U.S. forecast to 1.8% from 3.6%
• June 30: Zenith Optimedia cuts its U.S. ad forecast for the second time in three months
• May 30: Lehman drops 2008 U.S. online ad forecast from 24% growth to 23%
• March 19: eMarketer cuts its 2008 online ad forecast 6%
• September 14: Oppenheimer cuts 2008 U.S. online ad estimate 26% growth to 25%