Add one more voice to the chorus of conventional wisdom: The Web ad market has stopped getting worse, but it’s going to be a while before it starts getting healthy.

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Say what you will about Microsoft executives, they have been consistently on message during the past year or so. That message: Things aren’t getting better any time soon. Today: More of the same, from South Korea.

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The publisher delivered a pleasant earnings surprise yesterday by cutting costs. Now it’s hoping for a revenue bump, if advertisers will play along.

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I’ve been reporting a steady drip of cautiously optimistic forecasts for the ad business, but this one is less sunny: A JP Morgan survey of ad buyers says they’re unlikely to boost spending until next year.

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Another “things are looking up, sort of, maybe” report from medialand: A survey of advertisers says that many of them intend to increase their spending in the coming months. Except for those who say they’re going to decrease spending. Bigger picture: A year ago, things started getting downright terrible, which is going to make it a lot easier to say that things have improved today.

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Economists may be declaring that the recession is over, but declarations won’t do much for media businesses that have seen their ad dollars disappear. But here’s a bit of (very) cautiously optimistic news for them: Two reports from Wall Street research shop Sanford Bernstein noting the mildest of turnarounds.

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The traditional publishing business is grim, but if you broaden your perspective and look at the rest of the media business, things are starting to look… not horrible.

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.

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Here comes the second round of layoffs at Microsoft, following a first round that started in January. Today’s cuts will likely end up costing about 3,000 workers their jobs. Microsoft had previously warned that it would cut up to 5,000 jobs by 2010. The good news, says CEO Steve Ballmer: The newest round means “we are mostly but not all done” with layoffs. Here’s Ballmer’s memo to the troops.

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Question of the day: Did Apple somehow lay off 10 percent of its retail staff in the last quarter without anyone noticing until today? Answer: No. My bloggy brethren are hopped up about Apple’s disclosure, via its most recent quarterly filing with the SEC, that its retail group had “approximately 14,000 full-time equivalent employees” at the end of March. Three months earlier that number had been 15,600. Boring but important distinction: Cutting back hours is different than laying people off.

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Media giant Zenith Optimedia says the ad market is in worse shape than it had previously suspected. This is what Zenith Optimedia, along with just about every other ad forecaster, has been saying every three months or so for the past year. So it’s hard to get worked up about this stuff. The upside is also old news: Online advertising is doing better than traditional ads.

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ComScore, the Web analytics company which has been bringing us a weekly installment of grim news about Christmas sales since November, weighs in with its newest update. You may have heard this one before.

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It’s no surprise that financial advertising has slowed down in the first three quarters of 2008. The surprise is that it’s only been a 10 percent reduction, according to Nielsen. But next year will be worse, of course.

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