The pullback in advertising and consumer purchases resulted in a dismal quarter for Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (NYSE: MSO), as revenues fell 25 percent, while its net loss widened by a factor of three, to $12 million, from last year’s Q3. MSLO also struggled online as well, with revenues falling 9 percent to $2.7 million. The internet segment’s operating loss grew to $2 million from $1.5 million. Even merchandising, which has been one of MSLO’s more stable areas, had a drop in revenues of 39 percent, while publishing, MSLO’s largest revenue segment, fell 21.7 percent.

Earnings release | Webcast (11:00 AM ET) | Transcript (via Seeking Alpha)

With the crucial holiday season getting started, CFO Kelli Turner said that from an online ad perspective, Q4 will be MSLO’s strongest quarter this year. Turner didn’t specify, except to say the company is projecting online ads to be up by “healthy double digits.” Looking back at last year’s Q4 results, MSLO’s online ads would have been up 14 percent, if the e-commerce flowers business, which was moved to the merchandising segment, wasn’t counted. During the call, Turner struck a particularly confident note regarding the online ad business. “In fact, we’ve actually already booked more revenue so far for this year’s fourth quarter than we did in the same period last year and it’s only early November.”