• by Michael Shields , August 14, 2004

After a brief one-month recovery, business-to-business ad pages were down once again in June. Pages dipped 2.8 percent in June versus last year, according to data released Friday by American Business Media.

Ad spending in June was also down 2.8 perecent. For the year, pages are slightly down--minus .7 percent--while ad dollars are up an anemic 1.1 percent.

May had represented the first month of growth for b2b spending since December 2003 (pages were up 3.4 percent).

"We had a very healthy May, and we're not surprised by the slight dip in June," said Gordon Hughes, president and CEO of American Business Media in a statement. "We expect to see a more consistent upswing in b-to-b in the second half of the year."

Four categories did show improvement in ad pages in June: Drugs & Toiletries were up 7.9 percent, Telecommunications: +6.6 percent, Retail +6.4 percent, and Home & Building + 2.3 percent.

Both the Services, Direct Response & Classified and the Travel categories suffered 20 percent drops in pages for the month.