Advertising Growth Projections: Whom Do You Believe?

After close to 20% year-on-year growth of advertising for nearly four years, there is now a great deal of apprehension among media companies about what 2009 holds for ad spends. Four projections from media agencies and research companies give a wide range of figures. Madison Media has the bleakest Outlook. In its report with Pitch magazine, the agency said advertising will grow only by 2% in 2009. GroupM is the most optimistic, projecting a 9% growth in 2009. The FICCI-KPMG report projected a 7.58% growth and a just released report by Media Partners Asia, a research firm, says advertising will grow 7.2%.

Who do you believe?

We surveyed five CEOs across media platforms whose businesses are heavily dependent on advertising revenues. We asked them which figure they believed and why. We also asked them to base their answers on the performance of the first two months of the year. Here’s what they said.

Ravi Dhariwal, CEO, Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd. Publishes The Times of India and The Economic Times, among others.
“I don