I imagine you are not having difficulty finding articles on the dramatic decline of advertising revenues in B2B media (or elsewhere...). Just this last week saw Penton Media dramatically scale back to a 4 day work week to compensate for lower revenues.
So here is what I suggest your sales teams do, go out and sell the opportunity for B2B advertisers to be the market leader in their industry. Sell the opportunity for marketers to dramatically shake up the world order, in their world.
Don't take my word for it, look to business history and case studies. James Surowiecki has written a great article in the New Yorker on this. I highly recommend reading it top to bottom. Then go get your advertiser partners off the dime and into that leading market position!
(Frosted Flakes won, see the article).
Seth