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Just over six months ago, when 2005 was still a bright, shiny destination on the marketing horizon, we were treated to the annual equivalent of a farting contest. Media agencies and research companies were quick to offer their expert predictions on marketing communications spending for the coming year. In the dying days of 2004 it was an easy way to generate media mentions while simultaneously signalling to clients that media budgets would, once again, need to be inflated accordingly.

As usual, while assiduously avoiding any allegations of self-interest, almost every prediction was a rose-tinted vision of how the industry wanted the world to be, rather than how it would actually turn out.

The Advertising Association predicted a rise of 4.2% for 2005, while Carat said 4.6%, and ZenithOptimedia estimated first-quarter adspend would be up a whopping 12%. The Centre for Economics and Business Research forecast 7% growth, with managing director Mark Pragnell confidently predicting that the adman was going to the 'real winner' in the coming year.

Could this be the same adman the Wall Street Journal reported as being under siege after the shock announcement by Procter & Gamble that it planned to slash its cable TV adspend by 25% and chop 5% from its broadcast advertising?

Could these confident, single-digit predictions of advertising growth issued at the start of this year really precede the speech given by TV executive Peter Bazalgette last week, in which he warned that ITV's business model was about to 'melt away'? Speaking at the Institute of Economic Affairs' conference on the future of broadcasting, Bazalgette warned that without the urgent introduction of product placement on British TV screens, the 'big, advertiser-funded business will be a goner'.

At the start of the year, the Advertising Association forecast an impressive 4% rise in radio adspend. Could this be the same adspend that was last week reported to have dropped 14% on 2004 levels, the self-same radio expenditure that GCap chief executive David Mansfield described as 'pretty grim' and has led GCap and Chrysalis, two of the market leaders in commercial radio, to issue profit warnings?

What is disappointing is not the quantitative failure of the media industry to accurately predict advertising expenditure levels in 2005.

What is really galling is that in a year when there have already been some seismic qualitative changes in the media world, not one of the established media agencies or advertising groups have even attempted to give a more accurate projection of their outlooks. Either their media savvy is not up to much or they are simply too dependent on spending their client budgets to take any interest in providing forthright client leadership.

Late 2004 was the moment for someone at any of the big agencies to step forward and attempt a cali-bration of the paradigm shift that was beginning. Instead, it was left to internet bloggers and small independent research companies to light the way. Meanwhile the established, entrenched media organisations carried on giving us the usual predictable predictions of four point something per cent and a double-digit growth in internet advertising.

I will make two predictions for 2005: at the end of this year, irrespective of the media maelstrom of the next six months, Sir Martin Sorrell will say something conservatively positive about the media climate; and second, the average of all the percentile estimates of changes in adspend for 2006 by the big media agencies will end up somewhere between a four and five.

30 SECONDS ON ... ADSPEND ESTIMATES

- The common feature of almost every media prediction for 2005 was the double-digit growth in internet advertising. The Advertising Association predicted an annual increase of 33.2% in online advertising for 2005.

- Nielsen's recent analysis of product placement in the US (where the practice is legal) found that the top 10 shows for product placements had 12,867 instances in the first quarter of 2005, more than double the rate seen in 2004.

- As a result of declining radio adspend, shares in both GCap and Chrysalis fell sharply last week week. Both companies had warned last month that advertisers were cutting back on their radio advertising budgets. GCap is expected to make a full-year pre-tax profit of about £25m, which is 20% down on its previous forecasts. Chrysalis is tipped to make £1m; its original forecast had been £5.5m.