THE country's largest media buyer, Mitchell Communication Group,...

THE country's largest media buyer, Mitchell Communication Group, has talked down the gloom and doom in the media industry, saying demand from its advertising clients was still holding up despite a market slowdown in the second half.

"We are not seeing what certain people are indicating in the current Australian economic situation," said its chief executive, Stuart Mitchell.

"Our growth for the month of July has continued from the path of where it did in the last financial year, and that in itself gives us a lot of confidence," he said. "Our client base are very upbeat."

But market growth was likely to slow in the December half as last year's demand was propped up by spending for the federal election campaign, he said. Mitchell Communications has forecast 7 per cent growth for the advertising industry for 2008, which it is likely to revise.

Mr Mitchell made his comments after the media and communications company said that billings from its 2200 clients rose 21 per cent and cracked the $1billion mark for the first time during 2007-08.

He forecast more than 10 per cent profit growth this year, arguing that because 80 per cent of the company's clients were Australian, it was shielded from the downturn of the global economy.

Some of the woes of the TV networks were self-inflicted as they shifted around program times, while struggling to retain audiences and raise advertising rates, he said.

"A lot of the TV stations are flat in ways because the price of their media has increased and the audience has decreased, so people have found other ways to do it," Mr Mitchell said. "It's an argument I've heard more this year than I've heard it in any other year since I've been doing this."

Mitchell's net income doubled to a total of $19.5 million on $190.8million in sales. The company had embarked on a shopping spree to beef up its digital businesses over the past year to become less exposed to the cyclical swings of the advertising market.

The firm hasn't put away its chequebook yet, revealing yesterday that it acquired Vivid Group, a digital design and applications provider, for $13 million, to expand into e-commerce and web hosting services. It also plans to launch a research start-up.