• by Steve McClellan  @mp_mcclellan, December 5, 2011

Michael Roth, the Interpublic Group CEO said his group has not seen "major pullbacks" in ad spending by U.S. clients despite continuing worrying about the macroeconomnic picture. 

Roth, speaking at the UBS Media and Communications Conference in New York said that the amount of project work that has been pulled remains "under four percent," or a very minimal amount in his view.

In Europe, however, clients have pulled back more, although Roth didn't indicate how much more. But, he stressed those pullbacks were anticipated and built into the company's assumptions about 2011 perfromance. "We weren't counting on a big recovery in Europe," he said.

Roth also said the company was on pace to achieve its stated 13% profit margins by 2014 and that a major driver achieving that target is performance-based compensation. He indicated that currently 50% of the holding company's media services contracts have some element of performance based compensation and that that percentage will continue to grow. 

In response to a question, Roth said he did not believe the major digital companies like Google and and Facebook were looking to muscle in on the agency business. The reason is that by definition they'd be "biased" in pushing their own media on clients. "We do it agnostically," he said. He added that agencies are also better prepared to offer clients "big ideas" within the strategic marketing space.