First-half growth 'will be less than 5%'

The advertising industry will show growth of less than 5 per cent in the first half of the year, Advertising Association of Thailand president Witawat Jayapani said yesterday.

"Clients are cautious because of the political situation, particularly the People's Alliance for Democracy's rally. Nevertheless, they are maintaining their spending on media advertising," he said. "The political situation has yet to become serious for them, and I think the ad industry will not be significantly affected if the rally is conducted peacefully."

Witawat, who is also CEO of Creative Juice/G1, said clients were still conducting business as normal. But, the political situation has made a "most powerful" impact on the industry. I expect advertising spending to improve significantly in the second half, which is the festive sales season for many products. The political problems will be settled quite soon, and individual players will have a clearer business direction."

Earlier, Witawat predicted this would be a difficult year for the ad industry and projected growth of only 5 per cent in the "most optimistic scenario" of a peaceful political climate. However, he said the industry would suffer a solid decline if there were any violent incidents.

Media Agency Association of Thailand president Paichit Thienthong said overall ad spending in the first five months was stagnant. "However, it's quite natural for ad spending at the end of the second quarter to be worse than in the first.

"Politics is only one factor affecting business. There are also other uncontrollable factors, such as high production costs and increasing petrol prices," Paichit said.

She said it was quite difficult to make any predictions about the second half.