Research firm ACNielsen Media International estimates that ad spending rose by double digits in 10 of the 11 Asian-Pacific nations it surveys. According to its report, published here for the first time, the two biggest gainers were China, where spending leaped 44 %, and Indonesia, where spending rose 46 %, although that number appears large because the Indonesian economy is making up for lost ground since plunging two years ago.

This year, most Asian economies are performing better than expected. Many economists, however, predict spending in the region will slow next year because of sluggish exports and rising oil prices. Another ominous sign for the ad industry: Most of the Web companies that spent so heavily on television, newspapers and billboards have had to close their chequebooks following the plunge in technology stocks earlier in the year, prompting investors to insist that the companies they invest in control their spending.

"A lot of money was spent launching dot-com brands earlier this year," said Antony Young, chief executive of AdXplorer, a Hong Kong Internet advertising consultant. "But there's less money around now, and fewer companies in the mode of trying to establish brands. So the focus now will be advertising on the Internet as the most direct way to drive people to Web sites."

For now, though, advertising agencies that suffered through the Asian financial crisis are prospering again.

Indonesia, the world's fourth-largest country,- led the pack in Asia in percentage terms with its 46 % increase in ad spending. Indonesia was one of the countries hurt most by the financial crisis. Even now, its government is shaky and foreign investors fret, but the economy putters along. A raft of new, low-price products aimed at its 210 million consumers meant a big boost in ad spending, ACNielsen said. Advertisers spent an estimated $ 361 million during the first six months of the year.

A word of caution about the numbers: They are inflated because ACNielsen calculates them by merely counting television and newspaper ads and multiplying by the published advertising rates. Television stations and newspapers, though, often discount these rates, usually for bulk purchases.

Companies that buy space on behalf of advertisers say it's undeniable that spending jumped in China and Indonesia, but unlikely those jumps were more than 40%.

China, the world's largest country, is now Asia's second-largest advertising market, having surpassed smaller and more industrialised South Korea two years ago. It is now second in Asia only to Japan, where ACNielsen doesn't do much business and doesn't survey. The company estimated that advertisers spent nearly $ 4 billion in China during the first half.

While foreign multinationals such as Coca-Cola and Procter & Gamble are the biggest consumer-products companies in China and probably still the biggest advertisers, their ad budgets are spread over many products. So since last year, the 10 biggest campaigns have been for Chinese products, with nine for companies drugs or folk remedies such as beauty drink Puxue Oral Solution.

Local companies worry that foreign products will swamp them as China opens its markets to join the World Trade Organisation, probably next year. But the increase in advertising spending isn't entirely because advertisers are buying more ads; it's because television stations also are charging more, says D. Sriram, an executive at media buyer Starcom Worldwide, a unit of big U.S. ad agency Leo Burnett. "On the other hand," he said, "traditional Chinese medicine is really starting to take off.

"Thailand became the biggest advertising market in Southeast Asia this year, outpacing the Philippines, with an estimated 27 % increase in spending to $ 72 million. In the Philippines, troubled by a Muslim insurgency in the southern tip of the archipelago, spending rose only 17 % to $ 634 million.

Tiny New Zealand was the only country where spending didn't grow at a double-digit rate. It rose 9 % to $ 383 million.

"Across the region, our company had a very good first half," said Jeffrey Yu, regional president of U.S. agency Bates Advertising's Asian unit, which in 1998 lost what he says was a small amount and shed a fifth of its 1,000 employees. (It is now profitable again and back up to strength.) "But there's a reality check: Can we thrive without the dot-coms?"

Perhaps. Companies like Bates client HSBC Holdings, the London-based bank with branches in Hong Kong, are starting to spend more to promote their online businesses. "There are offices all over Hong Kong left vacant by ailing dot-coms," said Mr. Yu. "So if there's going to be more spending, it's going to come from the 'clicks-and-mortar' businesses like HSBC, not the dot-coms."