Wednesday, February 4, 2009

AOL report numbers

It's sad what has happened to AOL in the past two years.  A company that had a strategy of building high targeted CPM content, created the AOL "white label" model with sites like TMZ ,(with Telepictures), reduced to low CPM ad network inventory, and now losing 18% in ad revenues. Overall EBITDA was up 6%, but that's just due to cut backs, layoffs and "burning furniture".  The thing that really interests me though is the slowing in decline of the subscription business.  Who are these people paying for AOL?  I can understand if some people are still on dial up, (although the population without access to broadband must be very small by now), but still 6+MM people pay AOL for their service.

What can the future be? I would doubt that Yahoo is still knocking on the door, I could still see a spin off of the dial up subscription business, (what happened to that?), and potentially see a fire sale to a Google...but why would they do it?  One thing is for sure, acquisitions like BEBO, have created a total lack of confidence for the current management team, and Jeffrey Bewkes is going to come under increasing pressure to do something.

No comments:

Post a Comment