It is no coincidence that one of this year’s top advertising prizes went to a campaign promoting a $100,000-a- year dream job blogging about coconuts from a tropical Australian island. Escapist fantasy seems in order for ad executives meeting this week at the Cannes Lions, the industry’s annual awards schmoozefest. Sales declines at the world’s biggest advertising agencies are accelerating, not easing, as the recession barrels on. Agencies are cutting staff to compensate but pressure is rising as clients that began by cutting discretionary projects, such as brand research or wine-fuelled PR lunches, now take the axe to retainers.

There is more than the recession at work. The old cliché – that half of each year’s ad budget is wasted, only no one knows which half – no longer rings as true as it used to, thanks to the internet. Brand managers are ploughing more of their shrinking budgets into digital projects that promise measurable returns. PwC, the accountants, expect online ad spending to rise by 7.7 per cent this year to $86.7bn, as television and print advertising decline.