Ad CEOs Say Downturn's Bottom Appears at Hand

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Global ad Omnicom Group Inc. and Publicis Groupe SA reported significant declines in revenue and profit but indicated a bottom may be at hand in the global advertising downturn.
"We don't see a recovery, but we feel we've hit the troughs," said John Wren, chief executive of Omnicom. He added that it will take a couple of quarters to cycle through the current downturn, and a couple more before growth comes.
"We believe the worst is behind us," said Publicis Chief Executive Maurice Lévy. "All figures should be less in decline in the third quarter than in the second quarter."
"The revenue decline in the second quarter was slightly greater than we had anticipated," said Omnicom's Mr. Wren, who also pointed to pressure on the company's events, sports-marketing and recruitment businesses.
Both CEOs were cautiously optimistic about the rest of 2009 and 2010. Mr. Wren said he expects "modest" growth going into 2010, helped by the increase in new accounts up for grabs. Over the past few weeks, the new-business pipeline on Madison Avenue has begun to heat up, with big advertisers like Unilever, Bayer AG and Wendy's, a unit of Wendy's/Arby's Group Inc., placing their accounts in review.