TNS media intelligence on Wednesday released a report on total U.S. advertising spending in the first quarter and it’s not pretty. Ad spending was up a paltry 0.6% in the first quarter compared with the same period in 2007, TNS said. The culprits: a lousy economy and a decline in consumer spending. Spending on most media sectors was flat or down. The bright spot was the Internet, which had a gain of 8.5% (although that’s down from double-digit growth rates in 2007). Among the top 10 ad categories, spending fell a total of 1.8%; Direct Response had the biggest increase, up 9.3%.