Internet Advertising: After First Quarter Disaster, Industry May Throw In The Towel On Q2

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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Internet display advertising had what may have been the worst quarter in its history. In the first 90 days of this year, by most measures, the cost-per-thousand that large websites charged advertisers dropped at least 25% . Any site that did not have significant traffic growth lost a quarter of its sales compared to the same quarter last year.

For companies such as Yahoo! (YHOO), TheStreet.com (TSCM), and IACI (IACI) the trend will be devastating to earnings. And, the worst may not be over.

Ads for which marketers pay very little, known in the industry as remnants, are still all over the top sites on the web. A recent ad at Yahoo! Finance markets a way to meet Russian women. Yahoo! Sports is running cheap ads for the “IQ Challenge.”  High-end political website Politico.com runs ads for Barron’s on its home page. The revenue from these is based on the number of Barron’s subscriptions sold, which can be very low.

The second quarter is going to be a tough one for the big online publishers.

Douglas A. McIntyre

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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