Yahoo: Online Ad Sales Down in Q3 2008
Written by admin on January 28th, 2009 in Advertising.
On the week that we finally slipped officially into recession, reports that search giant Yahoo generated a loss in Q3 of 2008 should not be surprising.
That is until the figures are looked at a little closer, where the losses of $303.4 million compared with a profit of $205.7m in Q3 2007 are a result of reduced sales in online ads.
In times of recession it is a well known fact that online advertising can see a surprise growth, as advertisers look to continue to do business with improved ROI. Online advertising can not only offer this, but in time of financial hardship can offer precise measurements of investment to revenue generated that other medias such as print cannot.
It is these factors that have made online advertising fairly recession proof; however the results released by Yahoo show the true extent of the financial downturn.
Many analysts had expected far worse results when Yahoo released their profit figures, with the majority of loss put down to one off costs the company was committed too.
Yahoo had rejected a $45.5 billion from search competitors Microsoft earlier in the year.
“The company made important investments while aggressively managing costs, leaving us better positioned to weather the economic downturn and emerge stronger when advertiser spending improves,” : Ms Bartz. Yahoo’s new chief executive
Ms Bartz also gave a cautious outlook for Q1 2009, with total revenue expected to fall $1.82 billion to $1.73 billion on Q1 2008.
