Still, if you’re among those who, say, make their living working for an ad-supported media outlet, it sure is nice to see this sort of thing: Barclays analyst Anthony DiClemente jacking up his 2010 U.S. ad market estimates from no growth to a 3.5 percent bump.

That’s a reflection of an “incrementally buoyant picture,” DiClemente says in perfect Wall Street deadpan. Why the muted optimism? “We believe corporate America must and will return to market its products and services.”

Interestingly, DiClemente sees the largest increase coming not from Web advertising, but traditional TV ads, pushed up in part because of the Winter Olympics and next fall’s election season. Last week’s Supreme Court decision didn’t hurt either.

That helps explain why DiClemente has also raised his price targets for Viacom (VIA) and News Corp. (NWS) (which owns this Web site). Click on the table below to see a full breakdown of his predictions:

The summary, via MediaPost:

The optimism of ad executives to boost their advertising budgets has risen to its highest point in two years, and is now at pre-recessionary levels, according to the most recent in a series of periodic surveys gauging the long-term confidence of advertisers and agency media-buying executives. The study, which is based on an index of executives who plan to boost their ad spending over the next 12-months vs. those who plan to decrease it, currently stands at a positive difference of four percentage points, the highest level since the fall of 2007, when the index stood at positive eight percentage points.

And a chart! (Click to enlarge.)

That data point comes from Advertiser Perceptions Inc., which periodically polls ad buyers about their moods–and more practically, whether they intend to spend more or less in the future.

This tracks with the last report we saw from the firm back in May. And more generally, with anecdotal stuff publishers and ad types tell us.

The usual caveats: Things are getting better, but that doesn’t mean they’re good. And online growth is good, but it’s best if you’re Google (GOOG); everyone else is going to see much smaller gains. Or, at least as likely, smaller declines.

A little better than expected.

Not the most exuberant of pronouncements, but when you’re coming off a first quarter in which profit fell 55 percent, it’s cause for a little optimism. Especially, since Otellini says demand is slowly slipping back into its seasonal patterns. “We will see seasonality in the second half,” he said. “I’m getting increasingly comfortable that the dip here is not as aggressive as they are showing.”

A little better than expected.

Not the most exuberant of pronouncements, but when you’re coming off a first quarter in which profit fell 55 percent, it’s cause for a little optimism. Especially, since Otellini says demand is slowly slipping back into its seasonal patterns. “We will see seasonality in the second half,” he said. “I’m getting increasingly comfortable that the dip here is not as aggressive as they are showing.”

From The Wall Street Journal:

“Microsoft Corp. may re-evaluate its plans for job cuts, its chief executive said Tuesday, suggesting more reductions could be in store if the U.S. economic downturn worsens.

‘In case the situation gets dramatically worse in the U.S., we will have to rework’ our plan, Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said at a news conference without elaborating.”

Here’s one reason why Ballmer didn’t feel the need to elaborate: He said the exact same thing last week.

Here’s the quote, from a companywide memo distributed when Microsoft (MSFT) announced its second phase of mass layoffs:

“As we move forward, we will continue to closely monitor the impact of the economic downturn on the company and if necessary, take further actions on our cost structure including additional job eliminations.”

To reiterate: Ballmer, whose company has remained dour about the economy even as investors and other forecasters (like Rupert Murdoch) have shown more optimism, refuses to say he’s done firing people for the year. But he’s not saying he will fire more people. My hunch: If you ask him next week, he’ll say the same thing.

So says ad-tracking firm TNS Media Intelligence, which pegs the slump at 9.2 percent for the last three months of the year, compared to an overall drop of 4.1 percent for all of 2008.

I’m sure that someone, somewhere, will get some benefit from knowing exactly how terrible the ad market was several months ago–we also know, for the record, that ad sales were very bad during the first three months of 2009. But every media person I talk to is consumed with the state of the market right now–and what it might look like six months from now.

The good news: Some of the people I’ve talked to recently actually have good news to report. Or at least, good news as measured by the standards of  the “down six percent–or 20 percent–is the new flat” era.

For instance, execs at big Internet publishers tell me they think the decline in display ad spending may have bottomed out last quarter, which would bode well for restructuring efforts at wounded giants like Yahoo (YHOO) and Time Warner’s AOL (TWX).

Cable executives are even more bullish, and some of them, like Viacom (VIA) CEO Philippe Dauman, will even say so in public: “Signs over the last weeks have been encouraging,” he ventured during the company’s earnings call on Friday.

Let’s be clear: Viacom’s U.S. ad revenue dropped nine percent in the last quarter. So “encouraging signs” doesn’t mean “roaring growth.” And some moribund industries, like the magazine business, are still moribund (and broadcast TV’s day of reckoning is coming this month)

And even this faint optimism may be nothing more than delusion fueled by the stock market’s recent run or the hopes pegged to the notion that people have to start buying cars again, some day. Assuming the recession/depression lasts for another year or so, you can expect the ad market to really recover a good six months after that, since ads are a trailing indicator. But they do have to come back, some day. Right?

That’s presumably because the profit slump isn’t as bad as Wall Street expected. But maybe investors are buying some of the optimism CEO John Wren doled out–sparingly–during the company’s earnings call.

Not only was he hopeful that the “pace of economic decline [will find] a bottom,” he said, but he was hopeful that things could actually start picking up in the media business by the fourth quarter when “massive stimulus spending by most governments should start to have a positive impact.”

See, Bob Pittman? You’re going to get your ad industry bailout after all!

Speaking as an ad-supported media employee, I’d be overjoyed if Wren is correct. But the informal poll I’ve been taking of publishers–on and offline–for the past couple weeks has me thinking that’s he’s probably early. But it sure would be awesome if I didn’t have to run this crater art for much longer.

That’s not great, but it’s a marked improvement from the 2.77 the Index registered in the fourth quarter–its lowest point in five years. Why the sudden change? “While concern over the state of the national and global economy and financial system remains, a sense of foreboding appears to be giving way to an expectation of eventual, if slow, recovery in the high-growth venture environment,” Mark Cannice, the author of the survey explains. “This mustard seed of hope appears to be taking sprout among a majority of the venture capitalist respondents who provided their insight to the March 2009 survey. And it is nurtured by venture capitalists’ faith in the resilience of entrepreneurs to build efficient enterprises with disruptive solutions, more modest expectations for growth and valuations, and the early stages of a stabilization in the financial system.”

In short, no reason at all. The economy is still deteriorating, perhaps less quickly than it has been, but deteriorating nonetheless. And venture investment is still declining. But there’s a sense that things are going to get better. And they surely will. Certainly, it’s not too difficult to do better than no IPOs two quarters running. And, as Sandy Miller of Institutional Venture Partners reasons, an economic environment like the one we’re in often gives rise to disruptive new technologies. “While the environment seems gloomy with no end in sight we need to remember that some of the best companies have been founded and built during bleak times,” he said. True entrepreneurs will continue to find ways of moving their ideas forward. From a venture investor standpoint 2009 and 2010 should be an attractive environment for new investments though there will be little liquidity for existing investments.”

As Sequoia Capital partner Michael Moritz often notes, the best time to invest is often “when people are cowering under their desks.”

[Image Credit: VC Wear]