The coming year is looking particularly strong for the media economy, with the presidential elections and the Summer Olympics, which is no surprise.

What may be a surprise for many is that 2007 was actually a pretty good year, even though most forecasters see it ending flat compared to 2006 in terms of ad spending.

That's so for several reasons, and one is that 2007 suffers from comparisons to 2006, a particularly strong year in ad spending because of the midterm elections and Winter Olympics. A flat 2007 after a strong 2006 is still a good year. It means ad spending rose enough to compensate for the absence of spending in those two areas.

Another reason is that 2007 total ad spending was dragged down by two media, radio and newspapers. Other media actually were seeing hefty gains in spending, but the effect was to leave people feeling that the ad economy had stalled.

Yet another reason 2007 is a stronger year than it may appear is that several important and growing areas of ad spending, such as paid search, local internet advertising and cinema advertising, are not tracked by most of the ad tracking services.

Add those in and 2007 begins to look a lot healthier, with total ad spending up 3.1 percent over 2006 by the reckoning of Jack Myers of the Myers Media Business Report, which includes spending on all media, from television to videogames to custom publishing in its forecasts.

But 2007 has also suffered from perception. Forecasters came into the year predicting solid spending growth, only to have those predictions dashed when first-quarter spending came in actually down 0.3 percent on a year-to-year basis, according to TNS Media Intelligence.

That knocked a lot of wind out of things.

Downward revisions then began, and they continued as one quarter after the next showed yet more flat growth.

Back last December, Robert Coen, the respected Universal McCann forecaster, had pegged 2007 spending to grow by 4.8 percent. In June, he knocked that down to 3.1 percent, and earlier this month he chopped it to 0.7 percent.

In making their revisions, forecasters were looking at actual spending data, of course, but they were also reading into the media economy some of the woes of the general economy, which only served to reinforce their pessimism.

The economy seemed to swing from healthy to sickly in a matter of weeks, with consumers whacked by high fuel prices and rising housing costs as adjustable-rate mortgages began adjusting up, leaving them little cash left to spend.

But in fact, aside from radio and newspapers, media buyers say advertising demand continued to be strong.

That's certainly been the case on local TV stations. While categories like automotive have been scaling back, others have jumped in to fill the void, such as telecom, medical services, financial companies and insurance.

National TV has been virtually sold out for months.

Demand has been so strong that the network TV upfront was up from roughly $9.1 billion in 2006 to $9.3 billion. And prices in the scatter market, where inventory is scarce, are trending up 25 percent or more from prices paid in the upfront.

Also doing well are outdoor, cable TV, Spanish-language media, cinema, videogames, and many consumer magazines, and of course, the internet, which has seen double-digit growth each year for the past several years.

Going into 2008, forecasters are an awful lot more optimistic, and for good reason: the elections and the Olympics, which are sure to drive up spending. The elections alone are expected to pump more than $3 billion into the media economy.

Universal McCann's Bob Coen is predicting a 3.7 percent increase over 2007. Myers, with his wider net of media spending, is forecasting an increase of 6.9 percent.

A few media types, notably radio and newspapers, will continue to suffer from the ongoing shift by advertisers toward new media, where it’s easier to gauge an ad campaign’s return on investment, and will dampen overall spending data.

But they will be the exceptions. In looking at national advertisers, Coen sees only newspapers suffering, off by 1 percent. He sees total national advertising rising by 5.5 percent, to $198.5 billion. Local advertising he sees growing slower, at 0.2 percent, with newspapers down 2 percent and radio flat.