MediaFile

Over the last few days executives at Goldman Sachs’ Communicopia have talked about a stabilizing — or even improving — advertising market.

It’s not the only time they’ve talked about stabilization. It was the watchword of investors calls as far back as last spring. And it appears they were right. New figures out from TNS Media Intelligence show the advertising market wasn’t any worse in the second quarter than it was in the first.

That’s cold comfort considering the data show that advertising spending in the second quarter sank 13.9 percent from a year ago. For the first six months of 2009, spending is down some 14.3 percent from a year ago, or more than $10 billion in lost TV spots, print ads and radio jingles.

Here’s how TNS research guru Jon Swallen described it in a prepared statement:

While it’s tempting to interpret this as a positive indicator that things aren’t getting worse, the fact remains that the market has been steadily tracking at around 14 percent declines for several consecutive months and this represents billions of lost revenue. Early data from third quarter hint at possible improvements for some media due to easy comparisons against distressed levels of year ago expenditures.

Not much good news in advertising today.

First came the TNS Media Intelligence numbers, which, though dated, paint an awfully grim picture.  First quarter spending fell 14 percent, a big number in its own right, but even more startling when put in context. Take, for instance, the fourth quarter of 2008, when credit had completely dried up and companies were racing to cut marketing, staffing and every other expense. Ad spending then fell just 9 percent. Or how about the fourth quarter of 2001? After the bursting of the dotcom bubble and the attacks of Sept. 11? Spending dropped 11 percent that quarter.

Again, the 14 percent is a backward looking number. The first quarter of 2009 is history. For that reason perhaps the news could be taken in stride — if not for a brief statement by TNS research Jon Swallen that was included in the press release.

“While there are hopeful signs of general economic indicators bottoming out, the advertising sector still appears to be lagging behind. Available data from (the) second quarter shows ad expenditures tracking on a comparable plane to recent months.”

TNS is out with its quarterly advertising data. Frankly, it doesn’t look that hot.

The figures show that total measured ad spending rose just 0.6 percent in the first quarter from the same period a year ago, with budgets weaker in telecommunications and automotive.

Here’s how Jon Swallen, SVP Research at TNS media intelligence, described the quarter in a release: “Enduring concerns about economic conditions and consumer spending behavior continued to cast a pall over the advertising market during the first quarter. After a hopeful start to the year, the pace of ad spending slowed perceptibly during March and early figures from the second quarter indicate little immediate or sustained improvement in the core ad economy.”