The recession will hit the British advertising market harder than previous downturns, as the shift to online compounds cuts to marketing budgets. Enders Analysis forecasts that total advertising revenues will fall by 4.8 per cent in 2008 and 11.9 per cent in 2009 - the largest single-year fall since 1975.

Online advertising, which was growing at 39.5 per cent in 2007 and is expected to rise 19.5 per cent this year, will gain just 2.1 per cent in 2009. That growth is only because of search advertising, with online display revenues set to fall 5.5 per cent next year. Total advertising spend has grown slightly ahead of gross domestic product and consumer expenditure since 1980, but has "decoupled" since 2002, Enders said.