The number of companies which revised second quarter budgets upwards was 9.7%, but this was outstripped two to one by the 18.8% that made cuts, giving a balance of -9.1%.
It was the fourth quarter in a row that the report has produced a negative reading for the sector.
The second quarter reading for all marketing sectors was -12.4%, which was the largest cut since the final quarter of 2001, when the September 11 terrorist attacks triggered a loss of confidence.
This level of reduction in overall spend was highlighted by Mark Runacus, the chief strategy officer at Hicklin Slade & Partners and a member of the IPA's DM Futures group.
Runacus argued that the results should not be seen as a black and white judgement on the direct marketing sector.
He said: "Obviously the results are a concern, but not specifically for the direct marketing industry. I think it's important to look at direct marketing's results in the greater context of overall spend reduction.
"It's true that the results indicate a hastened shift to digital channels, but most direct marketing practitioners use these channels too.
"Recent warnings hint that we haven't seen the worst of the economic doom and gloom, so I'd predict that the accountable nature of direct marketing will see it remain an important part of integrated activity, with greater emphasis placed on building prospect pools from multi-channel acquisition activity, and gathering and using consumer channel preferences.
"The tightened purse strings will also mean that clients expect more from offline DM -- they will want to see more effective targeting, in turn -- this will drive up general standards. And that can only be a positive step towards addressing the age-old junk mail tag."
The Bellwether Report classifies direct marketing as including direct mail, email, telemarketing, door-to-door and catalogues.
Direct mail itself is in a particular downturn according to Marketing Direct, which has reported that.