I’ve been reporting a steady drip of cautiously optimistic forecasts for the ad business, but this one is less sunny: A JP Morgan survey of ad buyers says they’re unlikely to boost spending until next year.
Google marked down AOL’s value from $20 billion to $5.5 billion earlier this year. That’s still too high, argues a JP Morgan analyst.
Another month, another half-point: Microsoft’s search market share crept up again in August, according to the newest numbers from comScore. Since Steve Ballmer and company launched Bing at the end of May with a $100 million marketing push, they’ve moved from eight percent to 9.3 percent. So: If you’re Yahoo, and you’re about to kick off a Bing-sized marketing blitz of your own, do those numbers give you encouragement or pause?
Wal-Mart is the world’s biggest retailer, but online, it’s still a relative piker. Now the company is trying to change that by opening up its Web store to other retailers–just as its biggest competitors already do. But no need for Amazon and eBay to start sweating just yet.
Microsoft slowly claws back a bit of share from Google, as well as Yahoo, its partner to be. But despite a huge ad blitz, there are probably more than a few people who have no idea that Bing is a “decision engine,” or what that means.
Have you bought a Kindle? Do you plan on buying a Kindle? If you answered yes to either question, you’re part of a not-that-small group: JP Morgan estimates that some 10 million Americans either own one of Amazon’s e-book readers or plan to get one soon. Meanwhile, whatever happened to Amazon’s plan to bundle newspaper subscriptions with its DX reader?
We’ve seen multiple studies showing a boost for Microsoft’s search share since it launched Bing a month ago, and now comScore weighs in and says the same thing. ComScore is the market mover when it comes to this stuff, so it will be interesting to see how Wall Street digests the news. My gut: Not a needle mover.
JP Morgan has good news for Microsoft: Its massive ad campaign for Bing is working just fine. The bad news for Microsoft: For most people, Google is already working just fine.
Take a bow, J.P. Morgan analyst Imran Khan: You predicted that AOL would report an 18 percent drop in ad revenue for the last quarter of 2008. And it did! For your next trick: Tell us whether new AOL ad boss Greg Coleman can do anything about those numbers.
Back to grim news: A bad economy and bad timing mean that the DVD business, once a source of strength for Hollywood, is going to be a weakness. “Home entertainment revenue” may shrink five percent or more this year, which is particularly bad news for Viacom and Time Warner.
Along with a $25 billion write-down, Time Warner announced that operating income would be lower than it had predicted for 2008, in part because of weakness at AOL and Time Inc. J.P. Morgan analyst Imran Khan thinks that means AOL ad revenue fell off a cliff at the end of the 2008.
How much did you spend on Friday, and where did you spend it?
We’re likely to see flash analysis of today’s shopping binge before the weekend is over. But J.P. Morgan’s Imran Khan has already called a winner for the holiday: Amazon. He says 50 percent of shoppers say they intend to buy something at the e-tailer this season.
A year ago, the conventional wisdom said that the online ad market would still grow in an economic slump because online ads were cheaper, and more effective. And they are. But if the slump is big enough–like the one we’re in now–then all bets are off. Which is why there’s no longer any conventional wisdom about the future of online ads. J.P. Morgan analyst Imran Khan, for instance, thinks growth will slow next year, and has just reduced his estimates. But Gawker publisher Nick Denton thinks we’ll be lucky if there’s any growth, period.
Peter Kafka has been covering media and technology since 1997, when he joined the staff of Forbes magazine. Most recently, he has been the managing editor of the tech and media Web site, Silicon Alley Insider. Read more »
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