Universal McCann's forecaster, Bob Coen, has revised his overall U.S. ad spend estimates downward, except he's bullish on internet ad spending and has revised his estimates upward, reports MediaPost. Coen now forecasts that internet ad spend excluding search - will amount to $9.705 billion this year, or a 25 percent increase from 2005.

In December, Coen predicted that online advertising spending would total $8.669 billion in 2005, or an increase of 10 percent over 2005. But in the first quarter of this year online advertising spend increased more than 19 percent from 1Q05, according to Coen. He now predicts that overall ad spending will increase to $286,405 billion in 2006, a 5.6 percent increase from 2005. In December, he had forecast 5.8 percent growth.

Coen also forecast that dot-com brands would increase ad spending to $4.625 billion this year - a 25 percent increase from last year's $3.7 billion, but down from a high of $5.597 billion in 2000.