Many in the media world are still struggling through the slashed budgets and changed business models, but at least for French advertising group Publicis the advertising downturn is over. In its Q309 earnings release (pdf) on Tuesday, the company declared that the ad market reached its lowest point during June, and it predicted a less-than-apocalyptic 10-percent revenue decline for 2009. “One can assume that the regular deterioration of the market has stopped and that a slow and progressive recovery is under way,” it says.

Online revenues grew 5.5 percent in the first nine months of the year, and CEO Maurice Levy says he will achieve his longstanding aim of making a quarter of all revenues from digital next year; digital accounted for 22.1 percent of revenue in the first three quarters this year. Levy adds that Razorfish—the digital marketing agency that Publicis bought for €396 million (£360 million)—should be “EPS accretive” (i.e. it will start making money) in 2011, thanks in part to cost-saving synergies worth $13 million.

—For the first nine months of the year, Publicis made revenue of €3.25 billion (£2.69 billion), a 2.3 percent year-on-year drop. The only region to post growth in revenue was Africa and the Middle East, which was 0.3 percent up year on year to €92 million (£83.8 million).

—In Q309, Publicis had revenue of €1.04 billion (£947 million), a 5.3 percent fall (but 7.4 percent down organically)—which is an improvement on the 8.6 percent year-on-year fall in Q208. The UK and southern Europe saw “sharply declining numbers” in Q3. Despite the improvement, every region posted negative growth in the quarter.

—Levy is famous for his idiosyncratically frank take on the advertising economy, and his company now says a “gradual recovery” is underway albeit with “a few more negative quarters” expected before a final return to growth in the middle of next year.

• Publicis Closes Razorfish Acquisition; Microsoft Gets 3.3 Percent Stake In Ad Holding Company
• Earnings: Publicis Declares Razorfish Interest As Profits Slide