With half the year behind us, ZenithOptimedia has revised their 2010 global ad forecasts from a 1.5% decrease to a 1.3% increase in North America. The change is due to a surprising increase in consumer spending and confidence despite rampant unemployment and most of the change is coming from the online sector.

Newspapers and magazine are both expected to continue their downward spiral, while radio, outdoor and cinema remain fairly flat. Television is on the rise again after a downturn in 2009 but it’s Internet that’s galloping along at a brisk pace.

Looking at internet advertising by type, paid search leads the way and by 2012, the figure is expected to nearly double what was being spent in 2008. Display advertising dropped slightly last year, but is expected to rise again in the near future.

The fastest growing sector is social media and mobile advertising.  Says Television Business Reports:

“Between 2009 and 2012, ZO forecasts mobile advertising to grow by an average of 43.2% a year, while social media advertising grows by 30.2% a year, compared to 15.6% a year for the internet as a whole. The two formats overlap to an extent, since many consumers use their mobile devices to access their social profiles, and mobile social networking will become more and more important to advertisers over the coming years.”

In terms of actual ad dollars, online advertising has passed magazine advertising but still has a ways to go to catch newspapers and TV. With newspaper rapidly folding and others experimenting with online models, it appears that internet advertising will catch up with them in the near future. As for television, maybe now that Lost has gone off the air, we’ll have a chance of wooing some of those ad buyers away from the networks and on to our weekly webisodes.