Elinor Mills has an interesting piece on ZDNet in which she looks at Yahoo’s admission last month that a slowdown in ad sales is going to lead to a turndown in earnings. She wonders aloud whether the ad slowdown (Yahoo pointed to automotive and financial services as the offending verticals) will extend beyond Yahoo. Although Mills’s piece doesn’t quite answer the “What does Yahoo’s ad warning mean?” headline, it does assemble an varied cast of characters to weigh in. There’s the usual back-and-forth — the Bear Stearns analyst says it’s all Yahoo while the Needham analyst says it’s everyone — but it’s Gary Stein of Ammo Marketing who has the money quote on how tenuous online advertising is: “Online is really easy to pull back on, way easier than canceling on print or billboard inventory.”
Since Yahoo is not the only online venture whose advertising leans toward automotive and financial services, it’s ridiculous to think that no other site is feeling the pain. Maybe not as much — a small sniffle at a small site could mean a deafening sneeze at an online giant — but if it’s affecting Yahoo more, it’s because Yahoo is a larger, more mainstream site. Any broader macroeconomic changes, like slowing ad sales, are going to have a greater impact on a broad portal like Yahoo. If anything, it’s a sign at how mainstream Internet advertising has become.
Subscriber content
?
Subscriber content comes from Gigaom Research, bridging the gap between breaking news and long-tail research. Visit any of our reports to learn more and subscribe.
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Comments have been disabled for this post