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With recession fading and the World Cup looming, adland senses recovery

Like the most anxious of gardeners, the media village has been anxiously searching for those elusive green shoots of recovery.

The year started with most analysts predicting no hint of a recovery until the second half – or not even until 2004 in the worst scenario painted by ABN Amro. But a small flurry of encouraging signs has set pulses racing.

In recent days Emap, publisher of FHM and Heat, has reported "some" improvements in advertising bookings compared with the last quarter of 2001. The GWR radio group, owner of Classic FM, has made similar claims.

Maiden, Britain's biggest poster contractor, said it had seen a "slow but steady recovery" in the past two months, and even television advertising revenue is up in May for the first time in nearly a year and a half.

Add it all together and the daring are speculating whether the long-awaited recovery in the beleaguered media advertising market really could be on its way.

With redundancies abounding in newspapers, television stations and advertising agencies, nobody is yet gung-ho. Leading industry figures such as Sir Martin Sorrell, chief executive of marketing services giant WPP, have been warning the optimists not to get carried away.

A source at Emap, whose businesses include radio as well as magazines, says that, in the end, it had survived the past six months without any dramas. "But things are very fragile."

Emap remains unconvinced that the one or two positive signs necessarily mean a recovery, despite the encouraging rise in ad bookings. "The danger is that anything a company like Emap says, can be overinterpreted," one industry observer says.

The biggest factor most likely to confuse any sensible analysis of the situation is the football World Cup in June. For drinks companies, car manufacturers and purveyors of laddish consumer goods, the tournament should prove irresistible, however much advertising budgets have been slashed in the past year.

But for every business that sees the World Cup as an unmissable chance for a promotional bonanza, there are those that will decide to pull their advertising forward to May rather than see their products' visibility disappear in a testosterone haze.

Nick Milligan, deputy chief executive of Channel 5, warns that the upturn in television advertising revenue for May may be down to exactly that. He wants to see the advance figures for June, due next week, before he predicts whether the recent snippets of positive news are a true sign of recovery or a football-induced blip.

"The signs for May are encouraging," he says. "The [television] market is up 12 per cent and Channel 5 is up nearly 40 per cent, driven primarily by our increased audiences. But advertising budgets are a function of profitability and I feel it's just too soon to promote the green shoots of recovery. When we have a full quarter of positive growth for total television, then we could take a more optimistic view."

The cumulative television revenue figures for the year support such caution. The total to May is still down 4.6 per cent on last year, with ITV down 8.5 per cent (although its fortunes have improved since the start of the year when revenues were down nearly twice that figure).

However, Steve Richards, managing director of Grey Worldwide, the advertising agency, says it is getting "good signs" from the World Cup. "If you're a sports manufacturer or you have youth brands, you need to start booking the media for the World Cup now," he says. "And it would certainly help if England did well; there was a huge euphoria in 1996 when the European Championships were held in England and we did well. It is amazing how the big events can lift the spirits, and as creative people, we would want to utilise that."

Mr Richards thinks there is an element of "self-fulfilling spin" in some of the early green shoots predictions, but says it is like Blairite spin – "it's still based on the truth". The downturn has definitely bottomed-out, he says, and there are now genuine bullish noises emerging from the US. "There may well be light at the end of the tunnel. We would expect the summer to be interesting in terms of business moving and plans being made, with the real shoots of recovery occurring around October."

Laura Tilbian, an analyst with Numis Securities, says the decisive indicator has been the lead given by Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the Federal Reserve in the US, when he left interest rates on hold earlier this month after 11 cuts in the past year. "He doesn't need to cut any more because he's beginning to see a recovery coming through," says Ms Tilbian. "The United States is the world engine, and if the US recovers, we'll follow."

Given strong consumer confidence in Britain, which has remained largely undented, it was the recession in the US that caused such devastation in the British advertising markets and in the media industries dependent on advertising revenue.

"So much of national advertising in Britain is multinational stuff like McDonald's and Procter & Gamble – 78 per cent of it comes from America," says Ms Tilbian. The fact that local advertising, driven by things such as property and associated household purchases like furniture and carpets, has remained strong only reinforces this view.

There are other factors contributing to the dire picture, she adds. For instance, business-to- business advertising in the IT and financial sectors was hit because those were two big bubbles that burst. But Ms Tilbian is now optimistic that a recovery is really on its way. "Just look at the wider economy," she says.

Besides, as it is year-on-year results that the analysts scour to decide whether all is rosy, things can only get better. As one senior media executive puts it: "Companies dumped all the bad news and all the writedowns and redundancies in last year's results. When people report this year with completely clean balance sheets, they will look pretty good."

In the garden, when you clear away the weeds and prune the roses, the fresh growth looks more attractive.