Glimmers of Hope

Economic recoveries aren't clean and neat things, nor are they initially easy to spot. But I'll allow two events -- 1) the release of a study on pricing trends in online advertising and 2) a network equipment maker's earnings report -- to sway me into at least considering that the worst may be over.

First, as reported by InternetNews.com, ad revenue optimization company PubMatic reported that online advertising pricing levels have increased 35% this year:

"Although ad pricing has not returned to year-ago levels, the industry has gone up consistently every month since January 2009," PubMatic CEO Rajeev Goel said in a statement. "There is more hope that fall online ad spending may reach near-normal levels."

PubMatic has a good line graph here that illustrates the trend. Pricing has risen for five consecutive months.

Then storage giant EMC this morning announced Q2 earnings that beat street estimates. And while sales were down 11% from last year's Q2, company officials said the IT spending freefall appears to have ended:

EMC CFO David Goulden and CEO Joe Tucci said on a conference call that IT spending stabilized and became more predictable in the second quarter, albeit at a "much lower level" than in recent years. Still, the company expects the second half of the year to be stronger.

A far cry from irrational exuberance, I know, but I'll take it.