AOL’s Q4: When Failure = Success
And not in the positive “I now know 999 ways not to make a light bulb” way.
AOL’s Q4—their first earnings report since spinning off from Time Warner—numbers have all kinds of red ink and negative signs in front of them: display advertising revenue down 3% total YOY, international display down 22%, search and contextual down 19%, total ad revenue down 8%, subscription revenue down 28%, Other revenue down 5%. The only gain YOY was in US display advertising: a whopping 1%. And despite total revenues being down 17%, AOL still handily beat Wall Street expectations.
Yes, failure = success when people expect almost nothing of you. Says All Things D:
After factoring out one-time charges, AOL posted earnings of 71 cents per share on revenues of $801 million. Wall Street expected earnings of either 62 cents or 66 cents per share, depending on who you ask, on revenue of around $766 million.
And that earnings per share is way higher than, say, Yahoo (22¢).
Of course, the reason the expectations are so low is that none of this is a surprise. Time Warner ditched AOL for just this reason. (Boggles the mind to think that AOL originally bought TW. Crazy, isn’t it?) AOL has long been on the decline. Although CEO (and former Googler) Tim Armstrong is striving to retool sales in both personnel and strategy, their long slog might just mire them deeper in the red ink.
Meanwhile, the CEO of Time Warner got his expected raise.
What do you think? Can AOL survive?
Yahoo’s Q4 2009 Revenues Down Only 4%, Search Ads Down 15% YoY
Yahoo announced their fourth quarter 2009 earnings just minutes ago. They reported better than expected earnings, with a decline in revenue of only 4%, year over year. Most of that decline came from a 15% drop in search ad revenue from Q4 2008 compared to Q4 2009. But Yahoo’s search ad dollars [...]
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Pepsi Decides to Use the NFL a Different Way
In what may be a mini ‘bell weather moment’ in advertising, Pepsi has decided to keep its usual Super Bowl advertising money in its bank account. While they are not exactly saving it they are certainly redirecting it to online opportunities. I say this is a potential ‘bell weather’ moment because it ends a streak of 23 consecutive years where Pepsi has advertised during the event that attracts some of the largest viewing audiences in the history of television.
So what is Pepsi saying with this move? It’s more like a question they are asking the NFL and the advertising world that has made such a big fuss over Super Bowl ads for years: Where’s the value? Not to worry about the NFL though because they are still getting Pepsi-bucks……just not in a big chunk for the big game. Compete tells a little more
Pepsi is already a large sponsor of the NFL, having paid millions back in 2002 to replace Coke for the title of the official soft drink of the NFL. The company also sponsors Rookie of the Week section on NFL.com.
So the big moment is more about the how Pepsi is deciding to spend its money rather than with whom. The NFL is a marketing juggernaut (I had to use that word before the close of 2009) and will remain so. Even the NFL though is going to have to adjust to the dollars that are moving online that once fueled the just as important Super Bowl activity of watching and rating the advertisements. If last year was any indication that ‘pastime’ may be on the decline as well as many companies didn’t even create specific ads for the big game but simply rehashed old ones. Kinda takes the fun out of it, doesn’t it?
So why is Pepsi seeing the online space as the way to go? Compete shows a little data below that may become the new version of the old ‘Pepsi Taste Challenge”.
Even more interesting are the differences in competitive share of visitors to Pepsi and Coke sites between control and exposed consumers. Among the control group, Pepsi captures only 16% of visitors versus a lion’s share of 84% for Coke. However, the numbers are completely reversed among the exposed group.
So what is your thought about the days of the big Super Bowl advertising buys and the excitement around the creativity of the ads? Are the days of Super Bowl ads being a huge deal going the same way as my NY Giants (meaning directly south and in the toilet)?
Your thoughts?
Is Personalized Search Killing AdSense Publishers?
Earlier this month, Google announced that its Personalized Search results would come to even computers that weren’t signed in to Google accounts. With the opt-out system in place, many users and public computers can’t help but use personalized search by default—and it may be AdSense publishers paying for it.
The logic goes something like this: if Google is now storing information about what you’re searching for even if you’re not signed in, it may also serve ads based on your search and browsing history, which you’re less likely to click on than ads only relevant to the page’s content. I’m not 100% sure that theory holds true (need more data!), but at least some AdSense publishers are seeing definite drop-off since Google threw the switch.
A thread on WMW documents some of publishers seeing this problem—and others who haven’t. Among those who’ve spoken up, seven of eleven have seen some sort of decrease in December (the original poster cited a significant slide in CTR and clicks from December 5 versus prior years, with CTR down 12.3% to 22.6% of normal average and clicks down 22.8% to 35.2% of normal average).
Of course, the personalized search change isn’t the only explanation in the first 30 messages of the WMW thread, alternate explanations offered include:
- the “Caffeine” update in Google’s index
- annual holiday decline (though the OP and some others note that this is more significant than previous years)
- the wider rollout of interest-based ads
- short sample skewing the results
- sector-specific slowdowns
Interestingly, the original poster returned the day after posting and noted that his CTR had jumped that day. He hadn’t seen a dropoff in his earnings per click (though the new high day carried much higher earnings).
What do you think? What could be behind a decrease—and have you seen one? Is personalized search affecting your AdSense results?
Yahoo’s Employees Home for the Holidays
Would the last person to leave Yahoo, please turn off all the lights?
You may think I’m mocking the gradual decline of the tech company, but I’m not. Not this time.
Apparently, in a measure of frugality, Yahoo is sending home all but its most essential employees for the Christmas break. According to AP:
It’s the first time that Yahoo has required most of its 13,200 employees to use vacation time or unpaid leave during the holidays. Only employees performing essential duties will be working from Dec. 25 through Jan. 1.
You can expect more spam in your search results, viagra offers in your Yahoo mail, and porn on Flickr during this time. OK, maybe not that last one. 
Cop Draws Gun at Tweetup Snowball Fight; Is It So Clear-Cut?
While it’s easy for us to predict the decline, and ultimate death of mainstream media, I wonder if we know what we’re letting ourselves in for. Take, for example, the recent incident that involved a Washington D.C. detective and a “tweetup” snowball fight.
Mashable alerted me to the story. With a couple of pics and a video, it’s easy to believe that the cop overreacted and should lose his job:
Now, I’m certainly not bashing Mashable here–they took the social media angle that appealed to their readers–but let’s look at the “citizen journalism” side of this. Viewing the photographs and cell phone video, you might confidently predict that there’s not much the police officer can say to defend his actions.
He pulled a gun on a bunch of kids having a snowball fight!
But, if you take the time to read the Washington Post’s lengthy account of the incident, and you learn that this was, at worse, a misunderstanding and, at best, the correct reaction for a cop being pummeled with snowballs.
Personally, I still believe the cop overreacted–and should face some kind of discipline–but that’s part of my point. I’m a citizen journalist–aka blogger–and I make my living by imparting my subjective views on you, our readers. The Washington Post however, while not able to shake completely the latent bias of its journalists, does a much better job of presenting the facts–and leaving the reader to form their own opinion.
In Radically Transparent, we talk about “professional detractors”–those that are paid to report on your misfortune, yet without any apparent modus operandi–such as journalists. While we may not like what they write about us, we know that we can somewhat trust their structured gathering of information and procedures for correcting any erroneous reporting.
As citizen journalism continues to take the place of professional journalism, I wonder how this will affect reputation management. Are we ready for a world of biased reporting?
I’d love to hear your thoughts!
Bartz: Yahoo’s Search Decline Due To Dead Toolbar Deals
Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz says the company’s recent search market share declines are due, in part, to the loss of toolbar deals with HP and Acer computers. She made the comments during a keynote presentation today at the UBS Global Media and Communications Conference in New York City.
Late last year, Acer dropped Yahoo as its [...]
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The Cyber Monday Data Is Here!
All of the talk of how things were on ‘Black Friday’ is now followed by the yearly quest for the Cyber Monday data. We in the online world love to see just how much the shift to online commerce continues to overtake the traditional way that goods and services are sold. Whether these numbers are inflated or given too much credit is always a concern but this year’s trends, at least from a few sources, points to the continued rise of online growing while brick and mortar struggles.
To what degree this year’s trending points to a larger economic trend is a huge TBD (to be determined). Honestly, more people may have experimented with online purchasing to save time and money including gas and food that is part of the in-store shopping experience of a venture out on Black Friday. That’s just my thought and there is NO scientific backing on that one.
As for more ‘official’ statistics, Retailer Daily sums it up this way
Both annual consumer spending and traffic levels went up on “Cyber Monday”, according to third-party research results. Consumers’ interest in shopping online appeared to carry over from “Black Friday” last week, when e-commerce sales increased at a significantly higher rate than brick-and-mortar sales.
Here are a few highlights from the Coremetrics Cyber Monday 2009 report (PDF):
- E-commerce sales were 13.7% higher on Cyber Monday this year than they were last year
- Average dollar amount spent by consumers per online order rose 38.2%, from $130.24 to $180.03
- Apparel retailers and jewelry retailers drove this increase with 26.4% and 14.3% jumps in average dollar amount spent per online order, respectively.
- Sporting goods segment, retailers reported a nearly 55% increase in new site visitors, but a 3.1% decline in average dollar amount spent per online order.
- Department store retailers reported a 33% increase in new site visitors, but a nearly 10% decrease in the average value of each online order.
- Per order, consumers purchased 30% more items this year than they did last year.
November 2009 American Express Spending and Saving Tracker reports that this e-commerce surge may trend though the holiday season
- 79% of overall respondents plan to use the internet as a tool for holiday shopping
- 45% plan to purchase items online
- 28% will use the internet to buy hard-to-find items
- 27% will use the internet for product research
- 25% will go online for gift ideas
One particularly interesting piece of data is around the projected use of mobile in the holiday shopping experience is on the rise.
According to the Deloitte 24th Annual Holiday Survey, 19% of consumers plan to access the internet via their mobile phones while shopping to find store locations, obtain coupons and sales information, as well as research products and prices. This percentage rose to 39% in the 18 to 29 age group.
So do we dare take this information and say that the economy is truly on the rebound and rosier days are ahead for all? Probably not a good idea. I guess the solace that can be taken is that if there is one industry in the marketing world that is at least going to stay afloat during these rough times it’s the Internet marketing segment. Maybe we should just count those blessings and move on.
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MSFT Quarter: Revenues Down 14 Percent, But Beat Estimates
Microsoft announced quarterly revenues of $12.9 billion, a decline of just over 14 percent from the same period a year ago. Adjusted revenue, which accounts for $1.5 billion in deferred Windows 7 receipts put the quarter at $14.4 billion, just 4 percent down vs. a year ago. Profits were also down. Online services (where Bing [...]
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