The company’s organic growth–sales after netting out acquisitions and currency fluctuations–dropped 14.2 percent, just barely better than the 14.5 percent it posted the previous quarter.

That is “less sequential progress in the quarter than we hope to see,” CEO Michael Roth deadpanned. On the plus side, his agencies are having nice chats:

However, it’s fair to say that the tone of our conversations with clients concerning the economy is improving. However, we’ve not seen this yet converted to consistent commitments to new or existing projects. Therefore, it looks as if the pace of the recovery will be gradual and that significantly improving organic revenue performance for the whole of 2009 compared to the first nine months performance will be challenging.

In the end, Roth gave more or less the same report that we’ve seen most other places that aren’t in the search ad business dominated by Google (GOOG): He argued that “the worst is over,” but he thinks any significant improvement won’t show up until 2010.

Alas, that kind of muted hopefulness isn’t nearly enough to save any jobs during this fall’s media layoff season, which kicked off this week as my former employers at Forbes took an ax–yet again–to that company’s payroll. On the schedule: Cuts at the New York Times (NYT), Time Warner’s (TWX) Time Inc. and at Bloomberg’s newly acquired BusinessWeek.

The third-quarter earnings results of ginormous advertising conglomerate Interpublic Group are out, and they’re really not that bad, considering that both the overall economy and the ad business have been sinking for most of the year.

All the key metrics, including organic revenue–that is, revenue it earned without the benefits of mergers and acquisitions–are up nicely.

How’d that happen? In part, it’s because IPG doesn’t just do advertising (it also tackles marketing, PR and other related endeavors), and in part it’s because IPG’s business is spread out worldwide, so it benefits from international growth markets that haven’t been hit as hard as the U.S. Yet.

Alas, that may be the last decent quarter that IPG or most other ad-related businesses see for a while. That’s not a surprise to anyone who’s been paying attention, but since IPG is a public company it has to go ahead and spell it out, anyway.

Here’s CEO Michael Roth, via the company’s earnings release:

During the past few weeks, it has become clear that the global financial situation has begun to weigh on marketers spending plans for both the fourth quarter and 2009. As such, we will continue to monitor broader economic developments and to focus on meeting the needs of our clients and managing our margins. While we believe that with our strong performance year to date we remain positioned to achieve our financial objectives for 2008, the impact of an increasingly unsettled and volatile business environment on our sector is not yet clear and creates a risk to meeting our stated goals.”

Translation: Buckle up.

[Image Credit: Robyn Gallagher]