Certainly visibility is low right now, and it’s probably better to err on the side of stone-cold sobriety than blithe optimism, but I think we can count on several things in 2009. Not all of them are positive, mind you, but there can be some comfort in quantifying the pain we all know is coming.

1. No doubt about it, marketers will be cutting back on advertising spending this year. All the industry pundits, media firms, Wall Street analysts and bloggers are predicting slashed budgets across the board. A look at the latest projections for total US ad spending growth in 2009 reveals a consistently downward trend, and that’s after negative growth in both 2007 and 2008.

It’s worth noting in the chart below that the lowest number, the -10% growth rate from Barclays Capital, is also the most recent prediction. Previously, Barclays had forecast a decline of only 5.5%.

2. Among traditional media, newspapers, radio and magazines will see the worst declines. There is a double whammy in effect here, too. The economic recession, while severe, is only exacerbating an existing trend. The ad buying, measurement and reporting systems of traditional media are being systematically rewired for the digital age. As I wrote in Digital Marketing Now (my recent white paper about the strength of digital in a downturn), even before the financial meltdown started, analog media was undergoing wrenching changes. Reasons included audience fragmentation, the fundamental shift in power from marketers to consumers and a slew of digital technologies enabled by the Internet.

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