Call me Professor Positive if you must, but I don’t think that’s terrible: It means that 60 percent of phone users are okay with ads. And I suspect the number will be higher once the ads move from the theoretical/novelty realm into something you see whenever you use your phone or in exchange for getting something of value.

(And yes, I understand that a vocal minority absolutely hates advertising of all sorts and is reading this story on a computer that runs ad-blocking software. Good for you! Please let me know how you’d like to pay for this stuff and everything else you consume on the Web).

Here’s the research from Parks Associates, via Mediapost (click to enlarge):

Remember that even if mobile ads do take off as expected, it’s still going to be a relatively small business for some time. Bernstein Research figures mobile ads may generate $2.2 billion by 2013, which is nothing to sneeze at, but still a small fraction of the $32 billion Web ad market. Most of the mobile ad dollars, of course, are expected to flow to Google (GOOG) and Yahoo (YHOO).

Publicis, the giant French ad holding company, has been warning Web publishers to be “hyper-vigilant” about other bogus ads like the ones the Times mistakenly sold, which were purportedly for Vonage (VG) but were actually designed to distribute malware. Publicis, whose units includes Starcom, Digitas, Optimedia, MediaVest, Zenith, and Spark, has been sending out letters warning publishers to be wary of the rogue ads, which it describes as an “industry issue.”

The catch: It appears that the only way to combat the attacks, at least in the near-term, is to do something that runs counter to industry trends: Throw bodies at the problem. Publicis wants publishers to individually verify the ad orders they receive, which would be a nonissue for traditional media but is a problem for Web publishing, which increasingly relies on automation. Mediapost:

The incidents have exposed potential vulnerabilities in on online publishing security, and are causing advertisers, agencies and publishers alike to reassess the processes they use to conduct business, especially as they interact with an increasing array of third-party intermediaries–advertising networks, exchanges, etc.–many of which place insertion orders automatically and without human intervention. The solution, as the Times’ and Publicis’ new policies suggest, is to reinsert human interaction into the process–at least for the time being.

Whoops. That whole thrust of Web publishing is get humans as far away as possible from buying and selling decisions: The ad exchange that Google (GOOG) launched last month, for instance, is designed to handle those tasks in milliseconds. Now think about how long it takes to pick up the phone to actually confirm that ad buyers are who they say they are [shudder].

It’s possible that this is simply butt-covering on the part of Publicis (these attacks have been out there for quite some time) and that this will blow over soon. But I don’t think so. Which means the ascent of Web ads may slow down, just a bit, as the industry figures out just how many humans it will take to fight the problem.

Helpful, right? Check out this MediaPost piece if you want more on the survey, conducted by media-buying shop Round2 Communications.

The bigger picture: This week, as you’ll hear over and over again, is the one-year anniversary of the Lehman Brothers collapse. The BBC has both a radio drama and a made-for-TV movie commemorating/dramatizing the event.

Which means it’s the one-year anniversary of the economy’s collapse from recession to (short-lived) catastrophe. Which means this is the one-year anniversary of the collapse of the advertising business. Which means that any year-over-year results you see now had best show an increase because they’re going up against positively brutal comparisons from 12 months ago.

Remember: This ad drop was so bad that even Google (GOOG) flatlined for a bit.

So if and when you do see signs of a rebound, make sure you’re looking at them with some perspective: There’s just about nowhere to go but up. Right?

So says Viacom’s MTV, which reached that conclusion after testing various ad units in more than 50 million video clips it ran across its various sites. Viacom (VIA) says the intro-and-overlay package works best for advertisers’ “brand lift,” which it defines via metrics like unaided awareness, aided awareness and purchase intent.

And, it insists, customers like it, too! You can see an example at the bottom of this post, as well as a schematic that shows the order and timing of the ads.

This isn’t necessarily groundbreaking stuff: Overlays combined with another ad message have been popular with advertisers for some time. And when a company that makes its money selling ads boasts about how great its ads are, it’s best to accept those claims with just a pinch of reserved skepticism.

But these kinds of studies and promotions are taken seriously within the ad business, and Web publishers of all sorts are eager to find new ad formats (see–or try to ignore–the new ginormous ads rolling out this summer).

Meanwhile, as MediaPost notes, Publicis’s VivaKi is working with video providers, including Hulu, CBS (CBS), Microsoft (MSFT) and Yahoo (YHOO), to produce its own “killer ad unit,” which is expected to debut next year. And Google’s (GOOG) YouTube, which once avoided ads like the plague, is now trying every possible combination it can find.

And I think that gap is going to trip up a lot of big players in the years to come.

For a reminder, head on over to NebuAd’s Web site, which no longer works. That’s because the targeting firm, which once employed 60 people, closed up shop on Friday, according to MediaPost.

NebuAd was supposed to work with various Internet service providers and track Web surfing behavior of the ISPs’ customers, then sell that data back to the ISPs. That plan blew up last summer when the company became the subject of congressional hearings, and by last fall just about all of its former clients had run screaming from the company.

The standard response here from ad folks is that NebuAd was a bad apple that practiced a particularly noxious version of targeting. And that the press, lawmakers and the general public don’t really understand how targeting works.

And all of that may be true! But even if it is just a perception problem and the online ad business has only the best intentions when it comes to collecting and using personal Web data, it’s a perception problem that the industry has done a lousy job of fighting.

So said my lunch date today, who’s a veteran of several big online publishing companies, and who tells me that the Interactive Advertising Bureau, the industry’s trade group, is petrified of more NebuAds because they will likely lead to regulation.

Recall that Rick Boucher, a conservative Democratic congressman from Virginia, has already promised to regulate behavioral targeting at the likes of Google (GOOG), Yahoo (YHOO) and Time Warner’s (TWX) AOL. If the thought of that sort of thing is so distasteful to the ad guys, they’re going to have to start selling much more persuasively than they’re doing right now.

Granted, “not horrible” doesn’t equal “good times are here again.” But I keep hearing that the sickening decline in advertising spending has stopped, at least, and that some marketers are actually spending money again.

Here are a couple more bits of anecdotal evidence:

The newest Advertiser Optimism Reports conducted by Advertiser Perceptions Inc., show that ad buyers are slightly more optimistic than they were a few months ago. MediaPost:

“The most recent survey suggests that the degree of ad budget pessimism may have bottomed out, or at the very least, is leveling off. The average for all media shows that 29% or ad executives expect to increase and 29% expect to decrease their ad spending over the next six months. That’s a marginal improvement from two months ago, when only 26% planned to boost their budgets, while 30% planned to cut them.”

And from Wall Street, a little more cautious optimism: Barclays Capital analyst Anthony DiClemente has upgraded his outlook and/or his price targets on a swath of entertainment stocks–Time Warner (TWX), News Corp. (NWS), Scripps Network Interactive (SNI), Viacom (VIA) and CBS (CBS).

That’s in part because DiClemente also thinks advertising–or at least TV advertising–has bottomed out. He now thinks broadcast TV ad dollars will increase by four percent in 2010, up from a previous estimate of minus-one percent, and that cable TV will increase 5.5 percent, up from two percent.

It’s easy enough to be skeptical of this stuff, especially any happy talk about TV, given that we’re now in the “upfront” season when network executives do their best to convince buyers that sales are hotter than ever. But wouldn’t it be nice if they were right?

[Image credit: Iragerich]

But if you really want to know why things are really grim in the magazine world, don’t just pay attention to the right side of the graph, where ad pages plummet like Wile E. Coyote off a cliff. Look over at the left side, which shows that even before the econalypse hit, magazines were essentially flat.

That is, magazines aren’t just getting hurt by the economy–they’re getting pummeled by a fundamental shift of ad dollars away from print and to the Web.

So: Anyone who wants to stay in the magazine world needs to contemplate a career on the Web, right? Right. Except it’s unclear how many jobs the Web is going to offer, since digital content is worth so much less than its analog counterpart, at least in the eyes of advertisers. More on that later. No need to pile on the grimness on a Monday morning.

But while there are plenty of people–from Google (GOOG) on down–waiting for marketers to start shoveling money into phone advertising, it has yet to happen. And it’s certainly not going to happen in the next few years, as advertisers stick to markets they understand already. MediaPost:

Quentin George, president, global digital strategy and marketing innovation at Universal-McCann, agreed that marketers are likely to be less adventurous in exploring newer platforms in the midst of a severe downturn. Even if funding for more experimental campaigns doesn’t completely dry up, projects will take longer to complete. ‘A cool idea that might have taken two months to complete might now take six or nine months,’ he said.

The grim outlook for ad spending into next year is bad news for much-hyped categories such as mobile and digital out-of-home advertising. ‘With the economy the way it is, (mobile) is one of the least areas clients are going to be looking at because it’s more of a test-and-learn situation,’ Speciale said.

Bob Thacker, senior vice president of advertising and marketing for OfficeMax, compared mobile to soccer: ‘It’s popular in the rest of the world, but we haven’t learned how to play it yet.’ From a media-buying perspective, Matt Spiegel, CEO of Digital Omnicom Media Group Digital, added that mobile is ‘just complex to buy at scale.’ Couple that complexity with more austere budgets and mobile becomes even less desirable as an ad option.”

[Image Credit: aussiegall]