Borrell Associates predicts that US newspaper ad revenues will be down in 2009 but will rebound by 2.4% in 2010 as the industry climbs out of the .
The firm said single-digit increases will continue over the next several years and by 2014, it expects US newspaper ad revenues to be up by 8.7% over 2009 levels to around $39bn.
Gordon Borrell, CEO of Borrell Associates, said: "True, it all equates to more of a dead-cat bounce than anything else. And even at 2014 levels, newspaper advertising won't be anything near the [level] we saw earlier this decade. Nor will it ever return to that [height]."
Reasons given for the rebound include newspapers improving their sales systems, the end of recession and the additional growth of newspaper websites.
Borrell said that the long history of electronic media has proven that there's never a one-for-one exchange and that people do not go to the web to "read a newspaper", much in the the same way they do not turn on the TV set to watch radio with pictures.
"Radio forced newspapers in the 1920s to become more local. TV's expansion into evening news in the 1960s forced afternoon newspapers out of business. The internet sucked the life out of newspapers' classified advertising and, as the number of pages shrank, forced newspapers to find ways to become more interesting, more relative (sic) to their audiences."
He added that the latest metamorphosis of newspapers was almost complete.
"This once-fat, gray caterpillar that we knew as the 'major daily newspaper' is turning into a smaller, more delicate, colourful local magazine, with fair prospects for growth," he said.
His comments follow the announcement that US newspaper publisher Gannett moved into second quarter profit, while McClatchy Company said it was seeing its newspaper advertising decline at a slower rate.
McClatchy, which owns The Miami Herald and Sacramento Bee, in the second quarter, but crucially added that the level of decline was falling month by month.
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