Online Ad Revenues Up: Is the Worst Over?

With Time Warner reporting earnings Wednesday, we now have online advertising numbers for the fourth quarter from the four largest players: Google (GOOG), Yahoo (YHOO), Microsoft (MSFT), and AOL. Tallying up their online advertising revenues provides a decent proxy for the health of the overall online advertising industry as a whole, since they represent a majority of those revenues. (For comparison, see IAB numbers for the U.S. only). After a full year of slowing growth, their combined ad revenues actually picked up in the fourth quarter, showing a 3 percent rise compared to the third quarter. Combined revenues grew 8 percent on an annual basis.