Yahoo q1 earnings rise, yang hails display ad future

Yahoo's net income grew to $542 1000000 on gross of $1.7 one million million during the first one-fourth, coming in at the upper end of its counsel and whipping some analyst estimates. The company made the case to investors that it could keep pace with Google in hunt monetization, but said its greatest ambition is to lead a revolution in show advertising.

Net income included a $401 1000000 gain from the populace offering of Alibaba.com, in which it has a 40 percentage ownership stake, during the one-fourth.

The strong showing should help the company contend with a looming proxy coup d'etat bid by Microsoft. CEO Jerry Yang said the wellbeing results were all the more astonishing in light of the Microsoft situation and the nation's economic adversity.

"We continued our attempt to transform the show industry," said Yang in a statement. "The quarter's results underline the fact that our scheme and investing are continuing to pay off."

It was a busy one-fourth for Yahoo, and not only because of the Microsoft bid. Yahoo also implemented large scale layoffs in Feb, previewed its AMP platform with select newspaper publishers, and acquired video platform Maven Networks. Additionally, not long after the one-fourth ended Yahoo said it would test Google ads on up to 3 percentage of its hunt queries.

The test's goal is to addition near-term monetisation, president Sue dekker said, although she added, "it's premature to speculate on what options we might finally pursue or whether some human relationship with Google might consequence."

CFO Blake Jorgensen said Yahoo continued to see softness in financial, travel and retail advertising during the one-fourth. Telecom and engineering remain very strong on show side, he said. Execs from both Yahoo and Google have expressed optimism that the troubled economy's impact would be cushioned by online advertising's quantifiability.

Decker, meanwhile, said Yahoo had seen demand shift away from guaranteed (premium) inventory to non-guaranteed (remnant) inventory, part of the reason the company has accelerated its AMP platform development. She said the company had redeployed key talent from Yahoo and its Right Media and Blue Lithium acquisitions to the project during the latter part of 2007.

"AMP is the first launch of a number of different launches that will be built on the same platform. Over time search will be integrated fully into that," she said.