Internet Outsider

What Mortgage Crisis? Financial Ads Keep Pouring Online.

From Silicon Alley Insider: We've argued that the mortgage crisis is likely to trigger a slowdown in online ads that could have ugly repercussions. One of the many counter-arguments is that even as the home loan business blows up, both mortgage companies and other financial advertisers will continue to pour money into web advertising -- because they need to keep lending money and because it's cheaper to attract customers online than anywhere else.

Well, a new report from Nielsen/NetRatings on U.S. Web advertising appears to support the more sanguine thesis. In July, four mortgage/financial advertisers showed up on Nielsen's list of the top 10 Web advertisers (PDF). All four show up in the August list released today, and three of the four increased their ad budgets -- including imploding Countrywide Financial, which increased its ad spend from $34.8 million to $35.4 million. 

So are we wrong about the risk the mortgage crisis represents for the Web advertising business? We hope so. But we're not abandoning the gloomy thesis just yet.  Countrywide's implosion did not begin until mid-August, when Merrill Lynch downgraded the stock to SELL and Countrywide sucked down an emergency $11.5 billion on its credit lines.  (And it wasn't until last week that the company began firing employees). The month-to-month rate of growth of Countrywide's online ads (per Nielsen) slowed in August, with a $30 to $35 million jump from June to July, which could be the first sign of a change in trend.  Lastly, we continue to worry less about what has happened than about what is yet to come.  But all that said, Nielsen's August report certainly did not provide additional cause for alarm.

Related:
Will Mortgage Woes Spread To Online Ads?
Will The Mortgage Crisis Hurt Web Ads? Looks That Way.
How Bad Could Mortgage Mess Get For GOOG, YHOO, RATE

The Great Advertising Share Shift: Google Sucks Life Out Of Old Media

[From Silicon Alley Insider] Everyone talks about advertising dollars shifting online, but when you're fighting all day in the trenches it's tough to get a handle on what this really means.  Here's what it means:

US advertising revenue at 4 big online media companies--Google (GOOG), Yahoo (YHOO), AOL (TWX), and MSN (MSFT)--grew by $1.3 billion in Q2, or 42%. 

US advertising revenue at 15 big television, newspaper, magazine, radio, and outdoor companies (Time Warner, Viacom, CBS, etc.) shrank by $280 million in Q2, or 3%.

Put differently, U.S. advertising revenue at all 19 companies increased 8% year over year in Q2, to $13.8 billion ($55 billion annualized).  The online portion of this pie grew from $3 billion to $4.2 billion (23% share to 30% share).  The offline portion, meanwhile, shrank from $9.9 billion to $9.6 billion (77% share to 70% share).  The online companies, in other words, picked up 7 percentage points of market share in a single year.

Other fun facts:

Within our company set, the only traditional media business that grew U.S. advertising year-over-year in Q2 was Outdoor (up 13%). Meanwhile:

• Television (cable and broadcast) shrank 1%, or $50 million
• Print (magazines and newspapers) shrank 5%, or $170 million
• Radio (terrestrial) shrank 7%, or $105 million

Obvious Conclusions

Traditional media executives--especially in the newspaper business--often blame their current woes on "the real estate market" or "cyclical weakness."   Economic weakness may be exaggerating the downturn, but it's not the real problem.  Whatever weakness is hitting the newspapers is also hitting Google.

Media power is not only shifting by medium (the handful of Internet companies are collectively valued more highly than most of their traditional media brethren combined), but by geography. Most "big media" companies are still headquartered in New York. Most media power, however, is now headquartered in California.

These trends are secular, not cyclical: TV networks, radio networks, and newspaper companies won't suddenly wake up one morning and find themselves back in charge.  Individual Internet companies may screw up (see Yahoo/AOL), but if they do, others will rise to take their place (Google).

Traditional media executives are doing a superb job of milking cash flow out of shrinking businesses, but you can't save your way to prosperity.  The smartest companies acknowledge this and are 1) returning cash flow to shareholders, 2) diversifying via M&A (as the Washington Post has done), and/or investing in or buying promising interactive businesses.

Details

We looked at US advertising revenue for 19 companies: Google, Yahoo, AOL, Microsoft, Time Warner, Viacom, CBS, News Corp., CBS Radio, Citadel, Disney, Entercom, Clear Channel, Clear Channel Outdoor, Time Inc., New York Times Company, McClatchy, Dow Jones, and Gannett.  We divided the companies into the following sectors: Online, Television, Print, Radio, and Outdoor.  Please see detailed data, analyses, and notes here.

What Went Wrong At Backfence?

Mark Potts knows, but won't say. Or more accurately, the cofounder of the community website network, which burnt $3 million in less than two years before folding this summer, won't give up the good stuff. He's citing "private business matters involved that we've chosen not to discuss." Yet he's happy to post about general lessons learned on his Recovering Journalist blog. A lot of this is boilerplate that could apply to any new business - startups are hard, keep costs down - and some is pretty much Web 2.0 cant at this point - it's a conversation, engage your community - but still worth reading. One promising note for any community-oriented, ad-supported startups out there - Potts says selling ads wasn't really a problem. But just for argument's sake, if we really are embracing communities here, and we really are in an age of transparency, I look forward to reading postmortems from SAS Investors, Omidyar Networks and other investors who sunk money into the venture. Anyone?

Oxygen Tries CPR on eBay's Ad Exchange

eBay's much-ridiculed online advertising exchange is not quite dead yet, according to the WSJ.  The exchange, which was dissed at release and recently rejected by the Cable Television Advertising Bureau, has recently attracted Oxygen Media as a participant, and Microsoft is apparently considering using it to buy some TV time. 

The TV ad sales model is in desperate need of restructuring and disintermediation, so the concept here is sound.  Given the initial reaction to eBay's Exchange, it seems doubtful that this particular effort can be rescuscitated, but anything's possible.

Instant Gratification: Microsoft Buys aQuantive

Always nice to make a good call, and Jason Jones made a great one yesterday--that aQuantive would be one of the next digital advertising companies to go in the panicked land-grab of the web elephants.  Even Jason probably didn't imagine that he'd be so right so soon, but we're proud of him.

Sick of forever being outbid and then having to mumble about "expensive" amid the Google-Yahoo celebrations, Microsoft made a preemptive offer on this one.  At 2% of Microsoft's market value, the acquisition is still a tuck-in, but it's the biggest one in Microsoft's history.  aQuantive won't solve all of Microsoft's web problems, but it will solve some of them.  Most importantly, it will mean that Microsoft's web business must--at least temporarily--be taken seriously again.   

M&A in the Digital Ad Sector is Smoking Hot; Here's Your Handy Future-Take-Out List

Jason Jones: The digital advertising industry consolidation continues.  Interestingly, most of the acquisitions have been cash deals.  Why aren't the big guys using their pricey stocks?  Maybe the acquirees have negotiating leverage.  (Or maybe the acquirors are hallucinating that their stocks are undervalued).

A list of recent M&A in the sector is below.  But first, here are the single folks still waiting to be scooped up:

Acquantive, Valueclick, Burst Media, and AdPepper, the latter two of which trade on London's AIM.  How much might the U.S. ones go for?  AQNT is worth $44 if you use the TFSM take-out multiple (23x), $60 if you use the DCLK multiple (33x), and $75 if you use the Right Media multiple (10x EV/Revs).  VCLK is worth $44 if you use the TFSM multiple, $66 if you use DCLK, $70 if you use Right Media.  And then of course there are all the private beauties: Blue Lithium, Tacoda, Efficient Frontier, Did-It, etc.  Go to it, bankers!

Recent Digital Advertising M&A

Google for Doubleclick: $3.1b cash (32x '07 EBITDA - my estimate) - ad serving, SEM, affiliate network

Publicis for Digitas (DTAS): $1.3b cash (16x '07 EBITDA) - digital ad agency

Yahoo for 80% Right Media: $680m cash & stock - implied value = $850m (10x revs - rumored value) - ad media exchange

WPP for 24/7 Real Media (TFSM):  $649m cash (23x '07 EBITDA) - media network, ad serving, SEM

Aquantive for Accipiter: $30m - publisher side ad server

Aquantive for Duke Digital Marketing:  $8m + earnout - European digital ad agency

AOL for AdTech: terms undisclosed - European ad server

Aegis for Trigger Communications: terms undisclosed - digital ad agency

Fox Interactive Media for Strategic Data Corp: terms undisclosed - publisher side ad server and site optimization

Doubleclick for Falk eSolutions: terms undisclosed - European ad server

Aquantive for DNA (UK), e-Crusade (Hong Kong/Shanghai), Amnesia (Australia),  Neue Digitale (Germany)