I found this article, Recession Spending: Ad Cutbacks Don’t Always Make Sense (byAndy Marken, President, Marken Communications) in one of the b2b advertising e-newsletters, and only after I read it, did I notice that it was written back in 2003.

Despite the fact that online advertising plays such a big role in marketing budgets today, the basic info in this article is still sound. If you stop advertising when the economy gets tough, you’ll have an even harder time when the recovery comes. The trick is to market a little differently, not to stop.