AOL: Q4 Advertising By The Numbers; Growth Not Expected Until Q2
AOL (NYSE: TWX) expects flat advertising revenue this quarter and Time Warner had to explain that during its earnings call, along with a lot of disquieting advertising numbers from 4Q07. Time Warner CFO John Martin provided most of the details in his prepared remarks and more came up during the Q&A.
Advertising revenues were up 10 percent year over year, to $620 million. Display advertising on AOL’s owned-and-operated network was up a mere 3 percent to $252 million. Third-party network revenue rose nearly 30 percent, to nearly $200 million. TWX invested $900 million in assembling Platform A last year; nearly half the growth in third-party advertising in Q4 came from acquisitions but but organic growth is strong.
– Paid search: AOL made $171 million from paid search in Q407, only 1 percent higher than the previous year. Paid search in Europe — 20 percent of paid search revenue — declined by $8 million because AOL no longer receives guaranteed payments from Google (NSDQ: GOOG) for European search. U.S. paid search was up “mid-single digits” with AOL benefiting from positive pricing trends across the industry but experiencing lower use and lower click-thrus. More after the jump…
– Flat times ahead: Part of Martin’s explanation: “First, advertising demand is continuing to shift to third-party networks. This is an industry trend. It
AOL one of oldest Search engine has been unnoticed for quite some years, but it has again started making buzz in Internet world. i haven’t uses AOL that much as compared to Google. But still i like AOL just because after google this is the one which gives best search result.
I think that after google yahoo gives the best results. AOL has always given me crap. I'd rather use ask.com than aol.