Yahoo Warns of Slowing Internet Advertising Sales

narramissic writes "Yahoo chairman and CEO Terry Semel warned that a slowing U.S. economy is starting to impact ad sales, particularly in 'autos and financial services.' But Yahoo was careful to note that it cannot tell whether the current slowdown is a sign of broader trouble or is limited to ads from the auto and financial sectors."

Boo Hoo

[DreddUK]

So everyone sells Yahoo! stock, because the growth is slowing, not because sales are decreasing. So this implies that the growth calculations were agressive, not that there's anything directly wrong with ad sales.

Advertising sales from both sectors have slowed down during the past three to four weeks, although both remain on a growth track. "They're growing, but they're not growing as quickly as we would have hoped at this moment in time," said Semel.

Quicker damn you, grow quicker...

hmm

[joe 155]

are sales slowing, or moving away from Yahoo? I know they've had a fairly poor showing as of late, is this just an attempt to try and explain that away within a more general setting and keep the share price up, hoping that people will see them still as a good bet? Still, I suppose that buying new cars might be one of the first things to take a hit if the economy was slowing, but wouldn't this spur advertising?...

Anyone have google's ad revenue relating specific to these areas?

Hmmmm

[jasoneisen]

Sounds like someone's sales are slumping, and they want to bring the market down with them.

Re:hmm

[Frag-A-Muffin]

Anyone have google's ad revenue relating specific to these areas?

Here's some data [google.com] you can look at. Google looks to be doing quite well actually :) Maybe Yahoo is just losing to google more than they thought? :)

I wonder what is included in "Financial Services"

[Distan]

I wonder what is included in the "Financial Services" category. Some posters seem to assume this is just all the online brokers. I bet it is more than that.

One of the most frequent (and annoying) class of advertisers I see on Yahoo are the seedy mortgage brokers, with all their ads for "teaser rate" interest only adjustable rate mortgages.

Now that the bottom is falling out of the mortgage industry, the brokers are getting more desperate for new suckers, er I mean "clients". There are less of those to go around and naturally the advertising is going to fall off.

Maybe Yahoo should just lift their prohibition against advertising porn. I bet they are leaving a lot of dollars on the table by not being willing to have a crotch shot on their home page. At least that industry is more ethical than the people who have been selling negative amortization adjustable rate mortgages on over assessed homes to people who least understand (and can least afford) what they were being set up for.

canary in the coal mine

[nido]

Newsflash: U.S. economy is in BIG trouble.

Short history lesson: Federal reserve started to inflate the money supply [aol.com] in early 1995 (blue line in the graph). The 'tech bubble' followed a couple years later. That trend wasn't sustainable, and the dot-coms bombed sometime in 2000/2001. The economy was well on its way to a recession by late-summer/fall 2001. The Federal Reserve responded to "9/11" by cutting interest rates to 1% (over several months), supposedly for the purpose of 'stimulating' the economy.

Newsflash: Mismanagement of the U.S. currency has caused half of the economic equation, production, to move to Asia and Mexico, either in search of lower wages or to flee rising U.S. costs. This is not a new phenomena, and has been ongoing since the 1970's [slashdot.org], though it is only recently (circa-2001) that that trend has accelerated to a completely unsustainable level. Cisco assembled their wireless access points in the U.S., and Intel made motherboards in Silicon Valley up until 1999/2000 or so. What happened to the Americans who used to be employed assembling motherboards and other electronics? Perhaps some of them moved to finance, and some to auto sales. But I digress...

Thus, when the Fed slashed interest rates starting in 2001, instead of entrepreneurs borrowing money to set up new production lines, individuals borrowed money to buy a bigger house. And an investment house. And a condo in the mountains. The widely-proclaimed 'housing bubble' started to take off ... circa 2002/2003, and reached its peak summer 2005. Crashes always follow bubbles, and the current real estate market [blogspot.com] is no exception.

Low interest rates also facilitated GM's 0% financing "keep america rolling" sales campaign. (don't remember what Ford & Chrysler called their corresponding 0% programs). But now Ford [thetruthaboutcars.com] and General Motors [thetruthaboutcars.com] are in trouble, because they can't sell new cars to customers whose credit line is maxed out.

Gonna get ugly, folks. The good news is that this coming transition marks the end of corporate wage-slavery. The economic system that will arise from the ashes will be founded with something along the lines of worker [alternet.org] cooperatives [dominionpaper.ca]. This is the worker benefiting from their own labor. No more slaving away to pay the "shareholders" dividends (mostly rich dudes who sit on their lazy asses and parasitically live off the working class).

John Gatto's book [johntaylorgatto.com] about the 'massification' of America fits in here too. Gatto maintains that the original american ideal was an independent livelihood. Blacksmith, farmer, woodworker, wheelmaker, etc. Mass production / standardization required government schools to produce a populace who would accept working a repetive job where someone else ("shareholder") was the primary beneficiary. Fun while it lasted, right? :)

Also see my recent comment, how the government spins the stats [slashdot.org].