Twitter is super focused on direct response advertising, the company told investors Friday on its second quarter earnings call. To that end, it’s in the process of deprecating legacy formats, including carousel ads, and investing in more DR-focused ad offerings, such as its mobile app promotion (MAP) product. Twitter plans to also retire other formats […]
Uncertainty around government regulation or challenges around monitoring user-generated content didn’t slow down Google as its ad revenue hit $32.6 billion in Q2, up 16% YoY. (Its parent company Alphabet’s revenue rose 19% YoY to $38.9 billion in Q2.) YouTube was the No. 2 driver of revenue growth in both Q2 and Q1, CFO Ruth […]
Facebook’s stock dipped slightly on Wednesday morning after the Federal Trade Commission formally announced its $5 billion dollar fine over privacy violations. But by the time Facebook reported its second quarter earnings after the bell, the stock had recovered and then some. Facebook is up 3.2% after beating expectations and raking in the ad revenue. […]
Turns out people really like those Snapchat baby face and gender swap filters. The app’s daily active users hit 203 million in Q2, up 8% year over year, and revenue was far better than expected at $388 million, a 48% increase from this time last year, according to the company’s Q2 earnings disclosure. This is […]
Publicis Groupe grew 0.1% to $2.5 billion in Q2, returning to positive growth after a rocky first quarter. Organic growth was down 0.7% for the first half of the year. Despite the positive quarter, investors were skeptical of Publicis’ $4.4 billion acquisition of Epsilon, which closed in July. Many wondered why the company has such […]
Holding your breath on ads coming to Netflix? Time to let it out. There will be no advertising on Netflix anytime soon if ever, the company said in a letter to shareholders on Wednesday in advance of its second quarter earnings call. “We, like HBO, are advertising free. That remains a deep part of our […]
Nearly everything Disney does these days seems to be for the love of DTC. CEO Bob Iger told investors on Wednesday that acquiring 21st Century Fox’s entertainment assets for $71 billion will create synergies for Disney’s direct-to-consumer streaming vision. “I feel really confident in our plans and the plans we’ve announced, because of what we […]
It’s out with the old and in with the new at Nielsen. Revenue for Nielsen’s Watch segment decreased 3.5% to $881 million in Q4, while Buy segment revenue declined 8.4% to $777 million. But freshly minted CEO David Kenny has a plan. Kenny, who joined Nielsen from IBM Watson in November 2018, wants to bring Nielsen’s […]
Meredith’s overall Q2 ad revenue grew like gangbusters, but digital ad revenue performance was draggy – and will likely be the same next quarter, the company told investors Monday. Advertising-related revenue nearly doubled year over year to $488.9 million – a 111% increase – and digital represents more than $400 million of Meredith’s revenue for its national media […]
Facebook is getting beaten up by a punishing news cycle – but, for its part, it’s beating the street. The stock surged more than 17% in after-hours trading on Wednesday. Revenue for the fourth quarter clocked in at $16.91 billion, a 30.4% year-over-year (YoY) increase. Nearly all of that – $16.64 billion – was thanks […]
Apple actually mentioned the word “advertising” on its earnings call. Although hardware isn’t going anywhere, Apple’s services business, which includes search ads in the App Store, is becoming increasingly meaningful to the company’s bottom line. “Services are scaling quickly,” Apple CFO Luca Maestri told investors on Tuesday. Although iPhone sales were weak during the holiday […]
Attention, broadcasters, SVOD services and tech companies in the midst of launching a streaming subscription service (or thinking about it): Netflix doesn’t consider you to be competition. “We compete so broadly with all of these different providers that any one provider entering only makes a difference on the margin,” Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said Thursday […]
Of the $70 billion in national TV ad spend, Roku’s Q3 cut was $100 million. But the over-the-top (OTT) platform and device manufacturer is gunning for more, using its relatively new measurement program to convince advertisers to divert linear spend to OTT. Roku touted that $100 million milestone on Wednesday, noting that its platform business, […]
CBS is reaping the benefits of a politically-charged midterm election season. The broadcast titan told investors Thursday it exceeded its Q3 earnings forecasts. Total revenue increased 3% to $3.26 billion and quarterly earnings increased $1.24 per share, up from $1.11 per share in Q3 2017. This marks the fourth consecutive quarter in which CBS has […]
Even the mighty miss on revenue – but Facebook is still raking it in per user and Stories monetization across platforms is just getting started. Facebook reported $13.73 billion in revenue for the third quarter on Tuesday, $40 million less than what analysts expected. It’s Facebook’s second earnings miss in a row. But Facebook now […]
Although Alphabet’s revenue grew 21% to $33.7 billion in Q3, that fell short of its target, sending its stock sliding 4.5% in after-hours trading Thursday. “We feel good about the underlying strength in the ads business,” said Google CFO Ruth Porat, noting that Google is investing in machine learning to further improve its ads business […]
Political advertising has been good to Comcast. Comcast’s cable advertising revenue increased 15.2% to $684 million in Q3, but that bump would have been just 0.6% without political advertising, the company disclosed Thursday. Meanwhile ad revenue at media division NBCUniversal was up (4.2% for its cable networks, 9.2% for broadcast). The increase was attributed to […]
Last quarter, Twitter’s stock got hammered after user growth stagnated, despite its solid financial results. But analysts appear ready to stop punishing Twitter for its user numbers. Although Twitter shed 4 million users in the third quarter year over year – monthly actives now total 326 million – the company’s stock grew nearly 3% in premarket trading […]
Disney missed its earnings expectations on Tuesday by a smidgen, causing its stock to dip about 1% in after-hours trading. But you can’t keep a good mouse down. Analysts expected $1.95 per share on revenue of $15.4 billion in the fiscal third quarter. Instead, Disney posted $1.87 per share on $15.2 billion in revenue – not […]
That moment when you realize Wall Street will never give you a break, even if you beat on revenue and report profits. #MAUproblems. Twitter’s stock tanked more than 16% in pre-market trading Friday morning based on lackluster user growth in Q2, despite reporting a 24% overall revenue uptick and a third sequential quarter of profitability. […]
Comcast’s strategy has long been to invest in every area where customers get their entertainment or information, so that even if one line of business is affected by changing consumer preferences, another could benefit. Cord cutters, for instance, reduced Comcast’s video business but aided its broadband business. The following are items of interest gleaned from […]
Even Facebook isn’t impervious to the downstream effects of repeated scandals, macro privacy trends and the law of large numbers. With Cambridge Analytica, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and flatlining use in North America, which is Facebook’s most lucrative market, the buck had to stop, or at least stall, sometime. It did so on Wednesday […]
Facebook’s monster growth narrative is set to stall in the coming quarters, due in part to its recent privacy and data policy changes. Shares plunged more than 20 percentage points in after-hours trading Wednesday when Facebook reported a $120 million whiff on its revenue goals – the company’s first miss since 2015 – and warned investors that […]
Omnicom is shedding nonstrategic assets to invest in data, technology and analytics. That strategy was made clear by management on the company’s Q2 and H1 earnings call Tuesday, when Omnicom reported organic growth in North America was down 0.9% for Q2 and 0.5% for the first half of the year. Worldwide revenues for the quarter […]
Facebook might be weathering more headwinds than you can shake a stick at right now, but that didn’t stop it from posting gangbuster earnings on Wednesday. Revenue for the quarter clocked in at $11.97 billion, up 49% year over year – beating the Street’s estimate of $11.41 billion. Click here to read the release. Proof […]
Twitter was the comeback kid in Q1. The company experienced its second consecutive quarter of profitability, with 21% YoY revenue growth to $665 million – $575 million of it thanks to advertising. Growth would have been higher – around 27% this quarter – if not for the headwind still blowing from the direction of the now fully […]
Traffic is down at Facebook. It’s a new look for the platform, which has done almost nothing but grow quarter over quarter and year over year. Changes to Facebook’s news feed algorithm deprioritizing viral video in Q4 reduced time spent on the platform by around 50 million hours a day. Daily active users in the […]
A stark juxtaposition: At the same time Facebook’s general counsel was getting grilled by members of Congress in Washington, DC, on Wednesday about how the platform was abused by Russian election meddlers, Facebook beat revenue expectations for the third quarter. Ad revenue was up 49% YoY, from $6.8 billion to just over $10 billion. Mobile […]
After a string of lackluster quarters, Twitter seems poised for a rebound and potential profitability, with early plans to launch RTB buying capabilities on its platform – but it’s still slow going. Although the company beat revenue expectations for the third quarter Thursday with $590 million, that number was down 4% year over year from […]
Publicis is still clearing up confusion among its employees, clients and investors about its offering and value prop since it acquired Sapient in early 2015. “We are currently making sure our model is clear for everyone,” CEO Arthur Sadoun said on the company’s third-quarter earnings call Thursday. “We have to start with our people so […]
