Ad firms say the threat from digital challengers is overplayed

TOP executives from the big four advertising companies hit back against concern their industry is in structural decline, blaming most of their recent woes on temporary cutbacks in marketing spending.

“It’s certainly not the disaster that the Street seems to think is hitting our industry,” Interpublic Group of Cos chief executive officer and chairman Michael Roth says at the Morgan Stanley TMT Conference in Barcelona. “This is nothing like 2008.”