Q2 estimates are in from the big four online advertisers (AOL/Platform-A, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft) and the big news is that the ad market is no longer dropping. Holding steady at about $7.9 billion among the four, the stasis in the growth trend is being heralded on TechCrunch as the new trough in the market, from which we can likely expect growth.

Is there cause for optimism? Although the data from the past decade isn’t granular at the quarter level, the last retraction saw its nadir in 2002, from which a new growth trend was reset. The IAB reported $1.46 billion in Internet ad revenue in Q2 2002, and $1.47 billion in Q3, a similarly flat Q/Q change, and then grew from that point on ($1.5 billion in Q4, $1.63 billion in Q1 2003, and so on).

The unabating focus on performance, ever-increasing publisher inventory, combined with improved efficiency, will probably continue to exert downward pressures on overall spend, but if you’re as “guardedly optimistic” as Obama is about the overall economy, then maybe this would be a good time to call Dave Winer out on his doomsaying.

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