During the q-and-a part of Microsoft’s FY1Q06 earnings call with analysts, CFO Chris Liddell was pressed to explain why MSN lags behind Yahoo and Google — narrowband and search was down, search was down and display was up leading to a mere 20-percent increase in advertising and a sequential 4-percent decline. Liddell replied that’s not about volume or marketshare: “It’s a monetization issue, and that is something that we are clearly going to have address in the future.” The new Ad Center is one effort to do just that. A mega-deal with AOL could be another.
Mixed in with all of this is a sense of uncertainty about MSN’s real role at Microsoft these days. Is it a Ronco product that slices, dices and does a dozen others things well but none spectacularly? Is it a portal? A software platform? Fulcrum Global Partenrs analyst Jamie Friedman told CNN/Money that decisiveness is what’s needed most: “They’ve got a problem. They need to either fish or cut bait. They need to exit or figure out how to fix it.”
Time Warner has decisions to make, too. The board has been meeting and earnings come out next Wednesday before the market opens.
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