Advertising's Black Thursday: Layoffs, Spend Cuts, Hiring Freezes and Client Collapses Bedevil the Biz

It will be a cold Xmas and a dark New Year for ad agency folks, as network chiefs, clients and analysts spent most of this week either firming up plans for job cuts or revising downward their already grim predictions for adspend in 2009. Even freelancers felt the chill, as WPP circulated a memo demanding their use be curbed. Among the developments:

• 3,500 jobs are to go across Omnicom's agencies, as key client Chrysler wobbled. BNET readers learned the jobs would be cut back on Oct. 27. UPDATE -- BBDO announced late Thursday that it would cut 189 positions across its agencies, due to the Pepsi loss, among others.

• WPP denied that 30 percent of its jobs would be cut across the board. Instead, an internal memo shows that there's an immediate hiring freeze at the network, with job offers being withdrawn. According to the memo:

Preliminary results for September show another month in which even our recently prepared forecasts for revenues have not been achieved ... even some of these markets [in Asia] now are feeling a dramatic change in fortunes ... We have noted that even in companies where there has been overall reduction in staffing, we have incurred a very significant cost in terms of recruitment agencies and/or freelancers ... freelance and temporary staff continue to be a poorly controlled cost in many of our companies ...

• Magna Entertainment, one of the pioneers of the branded entertainment business, has folded.

• Jack Myers predicted three years of adspend declines. Myers believes spend will be down 2.4% this year, down 6.7% next year and down 2.3% in 2010. Other agencies broadly agree with his take, according to Dow Jones:

Publicis Groupe media agency ZenithOptimedia said recently it expects U.S. ad spending down 3.8% in 2008 followed by a 6.2% drop in 2009. WPP's agency GroupM expects a 0.3% increase in spending this year followed by a 3% decline next year.

• Barclays Capital was the most negative, however. Analysts there said they believed spend would shrink 10% in 2009

• This year, spend declined between 1 - 4 percent, according to dualling estimates from TNS and Nielsen.

• See more at BNET's ad agency layoff counter, here.