Yahoo’s third quarter earnings came in this afternoon above Wall Street’s estimates ($0.11 per share versus the expected $0.08), but its net income of $151.3 million (on revenues of $1.8 billion) was still down five percent from last year. The biggest sign of life, though, is that its Panama ad-serving technology is finally starting to kick in, with revenues per search up an impressive 20%. That’s the first uptick in that crucial metric in six quarters. Yahoo still has its work cut out for it, however. As one former Yahoo exec put it to me recently: “Panama is really good, but not quite there yet.” This former exec, who is now the CEO of a startup that plans to make its money from search ads, will be using Google AdSense instead.
by
Erick Schonfeld
on
October 16, 2007
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yahoo is still in a very bad place. they can’t even make the simplest of deals right now because of the re-org. the worst part about yahoo is the major egos within the organization, they still think they run the internet.
Yes! This is great for Yahoo shareholders. Looks like Panama is starting to work.
Silicon Alley Insider (Henry Blodget) also has a good analysis (deep numbers) of the quarter.
btw – Erick your closing sentences are great.
…”Yahoo exec put it to me recently: “Panama is really good……
but ………will be using Google AdSense instead.
Classic!
CALM DOWN!
This is revised (downward) guidance they just beat. This is called a sandbagging by Sue Decker. They had to do this. If they missed their real numbers, which would’ve happened had they not changed guidance, their stock would’ve fallen into the teens.
Yahoo added Jamie Mottram of AOL blogging fame, Ross McKeon former NHL beat writer for the SF Chronicle, Kevin Iole one of the mosted respected MMA writers, they had the recent online streaming of the Strikeforce card from the playboy mansion. And that is just some of the people they have brought in on the sports side.
There are a lot of signs of life at Yahoo. If they can just find ways to maximize revenue for original content, they can capitalize on some of the bloodletting being done by the MSM.
@3 stone
Don’t rain on my parade:)
So I guess they should have continued to miss numbers?
If anything this is a very positive sign. Expectation has been in the dumps for some time. This quarter was just another opportunity to continue to kick Terry Semel and blame him for “some things” – which they clearly could have done, but did not.
Yahoo is twice as good as Gaggle and half the search as MSN!
http://fakestev...er.blogspot.com
Good to see Yahoo! still in the game!
Too bad Yahoo literally begs/spams me with weekly invites to add funds to my Panama account..
Alex,
Totally agree that making numbers is better than missing numbers. Let’s just keep in mind that Yahoo is not really growing anymore. That’s a fact. Their bottomline is flat, dead in the water.
I wish Yahoo would get it together. But at least Panama ads are way better than MSFT AdCenter. I have been playing w/ all 3 the past several weeks and I have more problems with MSFT AdCenter than anything – they constantly reject obvious words and then don’t respond when I contest their rejections. I think they have individuals (ie humans, not machines) rejecting things. Google is still the best to use but Yahoo’s is getting better quickly. We get different results on both too so we won’t chuck either one any time soon. Google removed “stories of wife swapping”
but MSFT removed “cherished memories” (our site is ALL about cherished memories!!)
yahoo is yesterdays business, google has consistently better results, more concise cross reference, it is just the best way to search, I personally hope yahoo falls into the hole that they dug for themselves, I have a yahoo and google acct., yahoo is the one one that continually spams me, I personally do not need their ideas of offers I “might ” need, and I sure do not need there “partners”, I hope they die a painful death, and maybe the company that emerges afterword will learn not to spam their customers! Good bye yahoo!! we will not miss you
Panama and Adsense are two totally different things. Who’s the Yahoo exec?
Well maybe we can spare an experimental egg out of our precious basket and try their Panama ad serving. Although I doubt we’ll boost their last quarter earnings. Hopefully our curiosity will pay off.
What I mean is:
Yahoo Panama = Google Adwords
Yahoo Publisher = Google Adsense
It sounded strange that the exec said that he/she was going to use Adsense instead of Panama. No big deal.
Erick – I miss Business 2.0 already. That was my favorite magazine ever!
Rich
“the CEO of a startup that plans to make its money from search ads, will be using Google AdSense instead.” – What kind of long-term business model is that?
http://answers.nobosh.com/
A lot of life indeed. Don’t forget Yahoo also hired Manuel Noriega.
@11: People judge you on the Internet. In submitting a comment adhering to very few rules of grammar or syntax, you expose yourself to being adjudged an idiot. Please learn how to write properly (and build a reasonable website) before submitting any further content.
Sincerely,
Everyone
There is no surprise that Yahoo is getting better considering Flickr and much improved search, and yahoo finance etc.
@11 JJTrip,
Why don’t you first stop visiting all those porn sites and submitting your emails to them. I personally have been using yahoomail since 1998 and have hardly had any spam in last 3-4 years. You are a moron and the world knows it now.
I’ve used Y! search exclusively for the past year or so and of late I find myself clicking on ads way more often than I did in the past. The relevancy of both search results as well as ads has gotten as good as Google at LEAST. Yahoo is also not behind in page-load times — no reason for me to switch to Google.
Local info integration and other shortcuts come in very handy as well. I sometimes laugh at the publicity Google got when it launched Universal search when almost all of that was already available in Yahoo. Talk about media sleeping with Google!
What perhaps Yahoo does lack is a bit of polish on their maps app, IMHO!
Oh and can’t live without Google?! My ass!!
It would be nice to have a fallback alternative to Adsense. Hope they keep improving Panama.
@OneSearch
Why attack the guy? That was uncalled for.
I had been a loyal yahoo email user since the mid 1990s, but today its completely unusable for me because of the spam. Yes, I had used my email address when signing up for website accounts (not porn) over multiple years, and so I can assume I have made it onto multiple spam mailing lists. Another issue is that my email address may not be unique enough, so spambots that generate random email addresses will hit my email.
Considering all of that, Yahoo’s spam filter just doesn’t work that well. I keep getting emails promoting various services that are obviously spam (viagra, anatomy enhancement, home loans, etc), which the Yahoo spam filter is incapable of identifying. I only keep my Yahoo email for the few people who haven’t moved over to my new gmail account, and because its the account used for their fantasy football service.
@sputnick
Are you an adsense user?
I am not sure I would call it signs of life but rather signs of some intelligence. It is my greatest hope that it is followed with signs of life.
@Richard Pryor (12 and 14), Panama powers all Yahoo ads both on Yahoo sites and on the Yahoo Publisher Network. It is the ad system. I double-checked this with Yahoo.
The title of this post – “Signs of Life at Yahoo!” seems quite wrong at this moment.
In fact, “signs of frozen action” is more like it. Yahoo! has recently announced company wide hiring freeze. All the extended offers are on hold and / or are terminated.
Many people have faced serious consequences, as they left their companies for the offer from Yahoo! Being a company of its stature, one expects more professional behavior from the execs. I hope this is not a serious sign of Yahoo!’s downfall …
Not sure if Yahoo Victim is correct, as the freeze was lifted with the quarterly PR. Could management have reinstalled it in a few weeks? Makes no sense! But, a lot of job postings were removed from their company website, so maybe Victim is right? Anyone know for sure? Were the jobs cancelled, or postings removed because someone was hired?