Now we’re starting to hear some ad sellers and buyers tell us that things are indeed slowing down this fall. But the stories aren’t consistent, so it’s hard to figure out what to make of them quite yet.

Yesterday, for instance, Time Warner Cable said that its ad sales had been soft last quarter, and that would continue through Q4. But Time Warner Cable’s main business is selling subscriptions to consumers, not eyeballs to marketers. So, hard to tell if that’s a harbinger.

This morning, though, ad giant WPP cut its full-year growth forecasts because of slowdowns in the U.S. and Europe and an “increasingly challenging economic environment.”

But the ad guys aren’t consistent about this stuff. A few hours later, ad holding company Interpublic said that it was hanging on to its 2011 forecast, even though “macro uncertainty remains.”

This is normally the point where digital optimists tell us that even if traditional ad markets get hit, digital will do fine, because marketing dollars are still transitioning from offline to online, and online buys are much more efficient, etc.

And all of that may be true. But I took a quick survey of some digital ad sellers in the past couple days, and heard uneasiness from them, too. The mild version: “Companies are pulling back and being more selective with spend versus spreading it across the board.” The more alarming one: “If you ask around, all you’re getting from anybody is ‘brutal.’ Dollars have dried up.”

Again, this is profoundly anecdotal, so I’m happy to hear from folks with different experiences — my hunch is that Facebook is still moving very quickly, by taking share from a variety of competitors.

More important, no one is yet suggesting that we’re entering the dark days of 2008-2009, when ad spending went negative — so far, people are just talking about not hitting sales goals they made earlier in the year. Hopefully that’s as bad as it gets.

Marketing companies are experimenting with a new wave of digital technologies to pitch to consumers while they shop: interactive dressing-room mirrors, kiosks with virtual customer-service representatives, and shopping carts and digital scanners that offer personalized discounts.

These futuristic technologies are among the interactive tools on display at Interpublic Group of Cos.’ new retail center at the advertising company’s Media Lab in Los Angeles.

There, Interpublic is testing innovative ways for marketers to connect with customers as part of an effort to better understand what makes consumers buy and to encourage companies to rethink their approaches to the role of the retail store.

Retailers are grappling with lackluster sales and consumers who are dissatisfied with the store experience as online shopping with its related interactivity becomes mainstream. Shopper satisfaction at retail stores is declining up to 15 percent a year, according to an ongoing IPG Media Lab study of more than 10,000 North American shoppers.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Green has rounded up about $2.5 million in financing for the Ventura, Calif.-based company. Founder Collective and Roger Ehrenberg’s IA Ventures led the company’s first round; angel investors include Josh Stylman, a co-founder of Interpublic’s Reprise Media, and Omnicom vet Jerry Neumann.

The Trade Desk is one of a growing number of “demand-side platforms” that are supposed to help ad buyers grab inventory from exchanges like AdECN and Google’s AdX. The idea is that the exchanges, which churn through a staggering number of ad impressions at very fast speeds, require ad buyers to use specialized software and services if they want to make the most of them.

It’s still unclear if ad buyers and publishers will embrace the exchanges. But investors love the notion, as well as the idea that the big ad holding companies, or perhaps even Google (GOOG), will want to buy a DSP or three. So the market for this stuff is beginning to get a bit frothy.

That’s one of the reasons Green is reluctant to use the word DSP to describe his seven-man company. But given that his team is still building the product and that he doesn’t want to talk about it until it’s up and running, we’ll have to use that term for now. You can get just a bit more info here.

But that’s apparently what just happened to Hyundai and Initiative, the agency that handles its digital marketing campaigns.

Here’s the text of an email sent out last week with the subject line “Hyundai–Recent Campaign Scams–PLEASE BE AWARE,” from one Tiffany Nguyen, an assistant planner in Initiative’s Los Angeles office:

Dear Partners,

It has been brought to our attention by a couple of our partners that someone allegedly working for Hyundai, or working at other agencies, has contacted various sites requesting proposals, and have even run a short campaign. As you all know, Initiative is the Agency of Record and ALL digital requests should come from our team. These campaigns and RFPs were not approved by anyone working at Hyundai, Initiative or WMG.

Please be aware of anyone contacting you from an e-mail domain address of ‘Hyundai-inc.com’. If you do happen to receive a request, please notify us immediately.

Thank you!

The Initiative Hyundai Digital team”

Confused? Me too. I’ve asked reps from Initiative–owned by ad conglomerate Interpublic (IPG)–and Hyundai for details, but haven’t heard back. I checked with Tiffany Nguyen as well, but she told me that her “higher ups” were the ones who should be talking to me, and I have yet to hear from them either.

So, wise MediaMemo readers, you tell me: What’s the point in actually purchasing bogus ads for companies you don’t represent? I’ve got some ideas, but would love your input. (Ditto if you’ve got any idea about who the buyer is or where the bogus ads actually ran.) Sound off in comments below, or contact me at peter@allthingsd.com or via the blind tip box here.

In the meantime, I’ve been looking for iconic Hyundai ads and have come up empty. But YouTube tells me that his ad was banned in France.

So says Ad Age, which rooted through the projections made earlier this month by Interpublic (IPG) research czar Bob Coen. That’s a great/grim nugget, because it puts what happened over the past few months–and what will happen in the next few months–in context. So does this table from Coen’s report (click to enlarge):

If you’d like to put even more of a pallor on your week, consider that Coen, like his colleagues at other ad conglomerates, is an optimist compared to prognosticators who work outside the business. Fitch Ratings, for instance, predicts a U.S. ad spending drop of six to nine percent next year.

Which is why the media layoffs that we saw crest at the end of this year are destined to continue in 2009.

Some of them will be at media outlets that still haven’t made the cuts that their peers have gone through, but will soon: My former employers at Forbes, for instance, have yet to consolidate the company’s magazine and Web staff, but when they do in January, they’ll be laying people off. We’re also likely to see cuts at Disney’s (DIS) ABC unit in the near future.

Just as worrisome: The notion that companies that have already made one round of cuts, like Time Warner (TWX), will be back for more once they get a better grip on how ad sales are really performing.

Over the weekend, for instance, the New York Post’s Keith Kelly reported that first quarter revenue at Condé Nast could be down 30 percent, prompting another round of contraction at that publisher. A year ago that would have been laughable. Now it sounds sadly plausible.

It’s now very old news that the online ad market is going to get roughed up next year. But by how much? If you want, you can take a gander at this week’s prognostications from Interpublic (IPG), WPP and Publicis. But online ad sales people I talk to say there really isn’t much point in placing any bets on 2009 until the end of this month.

That’s because ad sales have basically stopped until the end of the holiday season, I’m told.

There are some exceptions: If you want, say, prime placement at Yahoo (YHOO) to promote your blockbuster over the July 4th weekend, you have to pay up now. And Google’s (GOOG) search ads aren’t purchased in advance, anyway. But in general, no one wants to commit money to the Web until they see how they did in December.

That may sound like common sense, but it’s a change from past years, and it’s a story I keep hearing. Latest example: A sales executive from a very, very large online publisher told me he has multiple seven- and eight-figure ad deals hammered out and ready to go. But buyers have walked away and are letting the deals sit for the rest of the month, until they assess their holiday sales.

My ad executive is an optimistic sort (obviously), so he figures they’ll sign the paperwork eventually. But he also assumes that said buyers will try to use this month’s data as a hammer to knock down prices by 10 percent or more. I’ll check back at the end of the month, and see how that optimism is holding up.

Oh, and 2008 was pretty crummy, too: Total U.S. advertising spend increased by…almost nothing, he says. Technically, that’s an increase of 0.1 percent.

For 2009:

Total U.S. advertising: Down 4.5 percent

U.S. advertising: Up five percent–note that this number excludes search.

Overseas advertising: Up 2.7 percent

Total worldwide advertising: Down 0.3 percent

Bear in mind, as The Wall Street Journal’s Emily Steel points out, that these numbers are more optimistic than Wall Street’s estimates.