The latest forecast comes from Taylor Nelson Sofres' CMR, which gave its forecast at the AdWatch: Outlook 2002 conference at the New York Grand Hyatt.
It is a radical forecast turn-around from CMR, which in November, when the the war in Afghanistan was still raging, predicted a double-digit decline.
CMR says the rise of 2.5% this year will grow the market to $109bn (£71.6bn). As well as the upfront season, where networks showcase forthcoming programmes to advertisers, CMR said that the market had also been boosted by political advertising and growth in the Spanish-language market.
CMR CEO David Peeler said: "As upfront goes, historically, so goes ad spending in other media. If history is any kind of indicator, this year we're off to a pretty good start."
Peeler said that the second half of the year showed a marked improvement on the first half, where adspend fell 0.4%.
"The first half of the year has not been as bad as we expected it to be. We see this business coming back," Peeler said.
WPP Group chief executive Sir Martin Sorrell, who was speaking at the conference, said that the rest of the world was looking to the US market as a source of strength. "Any continuation of economic growth is going to be driven by the American market," he said.
Sir Martin's comments come just a day after he told WPP's AGM that he is still expecting that it would be 2004 before recovery kicks in.
"2002 will be better than 2001, and 2003 better than 2002, but pronounced recovery will have to wait until the US Presidential elections and the Athens Olympic Games of 2004," he said.
Highlighting the industry's change in fortune, Peeler pointed to the dotcom boom year and said that 2002 would be down 6.7% on 2000.
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