It looks like the mid-year re-evaluations and updates to the “start of year” predictions for the future of advertising are rolling in at a rapid pace. Today’s entry comes from one of the largest advertising firms in the world, Interpublic and its Magna Global unit. The news is good for advertising overall and particularly for the online segment as it is set to move into the number 2 slot behind TV in the race to be the largest advertising medium in the world.

MediaPost reports

The agency, long respected as Madison Avenue’s definitive source for the global ad economy, projected worldwide online ad spending would surpass the $100 billion mark, totaling $103 billion in 2015, due largely to an expansion of online advertising inventory.

The prediction comes as Magna dramatically upgrades its overall ad spending estimate, predicting that global ad spending now is on base to expand 4.2% in 2010, nearly double the 2.4% rate of growth the agency estimated in its last published estimate at the end of 2009.

So it looks like the predictions are coming in that we may have finally hit bottom in this massive retreat over the past two years. At least that’s what is being forecast by advertising crystal balls throughout the industry.

One interesting point covered by the forecast is that newspaper advertising

will continue to grow modestly – up 1.8% in constant currency terms over the next five years – despite sustained declines in many markets

This is a very different picture than what is usually painted regarding the newspaper industry. There are several factors at play in this with the main one being these numbers are worldwide in scope. There are still many places on earth where the online culture is not as ingrained as in the US. It’s an interesting caution when talking about newspapers as a whole because it is likely that further declines will take place in online centric cultures.

So TV will still dominate but even its impact is being diminished as the lines blur and create some confusion as to what TV really is. With the traditional broadcast delivery being supplemented and often replaced by online options the fragmentation of this medium will make for some interesting decisions moving forward. Likely to benefit will be the online advertising world as more ads are served in relation to video content being used for both broadcast and online delivery.

So things are looking up to some degree. My hope is that when things finally do start to really turn around that we can keep our wits about ourselves and not get caught up in hype for hype’s sake. If anything has been proven in the past few years is that that mindset never gets great results.

Agree or disagree?