European advertising expenditure is expected to recover this year, registering only a small decline of 0.4 per cent at current prices.

So says an upgraded forecast from WARC, which three months ago had predicted a fall of 1.4 per cent in 2010, after a decline of 10.8 per cent last year.

Expectations for five of the G7 markets – Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and US – have also improved compared with those from the third quarter of 2009. The latest estimates show Canada as the best-performing country in that group, growing by 2.5 per cent in 2010, followed by France, up by two per cent. Japan is likely to see a slide of 1.7 per cent this year, after 2009’s 10.5 per cent decline.

By medium, TV is due to take the biggest share of European adspend in 2010, says WARC, at just under 30 per cent, a percentage that has remained largely stable over the last decade despite the rise of the Internet.

Print will receive 27.9 per cent of advertiser budgets this year, while the web will be responsible for 19 per cent of ad sales, up from 0.1 per cent in 1998.