Downturn

Display Advertising Works, But It Works Differently Than Search — There's been a lot of talk recently that search and other forms of "performance" or "direct" online marketing will continue to grow in the downturn while display and other forms of "brand" marketing will struggle. I think that's likely to be true at some level but it doesn't mean that display advertising doesn't work. In fact, a recent comScore white paper that was presented last week at the Empirical Generalizations In Advertising Conference at the Wharton School is very enlightening. You can get a copy of the white paper by asking for it here. comScore operates a panel of over... [Tags: advertiser, advertising conference, advertising works, banner ad campaigns, consumers]

Screw The Downturn. Accel Raises A Cool Billion In New Funds — Twenty five year old venture capital firm Accel Partners is announcing two new funds today that add more than $1 billion to their war chest: Accel Growth Fund at $480 million and Accel London III at $525 million. The Growth Fund will focus on later stage investments information technology, internet, digital media, mobile, networking, software, and services. The London fund will continue to invest in early and late stage European and Israeli startups. Accel has over $6 billion under management. The firm’s current and past portfolio includes Baidu, Brightcove, Comscore, Etsy, Facebook, Walmart.com, Zimbra and dozens of other startups. Accel... [Tags: accel partners, bangalore, comscore, crunch, downturn]

SanDisk Cutting Staff By Over 10%; Trimming ‘09 Cap Ex — SanDisk (SNDK) is cuting headcount by more than 10% worldwide in the current quarter, according to slides prepared by the company for a presentation by CFO Judy Bruner this morning at the Barclays Capital tech conference in San Francisco. The company has 3,172 employees, according to Yahoo Finance. The company also disclosed that it is cutting 2009 capital investment to no more than $900 million; that is down from its previous estimate for ‘09 spending of $1.3 billion. SanDisk said FY ‘09 operating expenses will be no more than $800 million. SanDisk also indicated that it expects the downturn to... [Tags: barclays, barclays capital, capital investment, cfo, downturn]

Gifts of Change: Nau’s Corporate Giving Gets A Boost — With the Global Financial Crisis in full swing, most everyone is tightening their purse strings. It is not just retail sales which are showing a steep downturn, but so too are charitable donations. Not-for-profit organisations rely heavily on philanthropy from businesses, foundations and people on the street for their livelihood. So it’s not a pretty picture for charities right now. Take on example, when the Association of Small Foundations surveyed about 200 of their members, they found that more than half said “they would eliminate support to some charities in order to be able to fully support the res...... [Tags: charitable donations, charities, downturn, full swing, global financial crisis]

Hard times hit Bay Area restaurants — I’m not entirely displeased about this part of the downturn. Despite an abundance of competition for fine dining restaurants in the Bay Area, the fact remains that prices have gone up well beyond the rate of inflation, especially for wine. It’s not uncommon to see a bottle of wine that I know goes for $24 retail selling for upwards of $60, and that goes well beyond what is reasonable profit from this diner’s perspective. Not since 9/11 have Bay Area restaurants, whether it be the fancy, white-tablecloth ones or the cozy neighborhood hangouts, seen such a lull in business. But... [Tags: bay area restaurants, bottle of wine, cozy neighborhood, downturn, fine dining restaurants]

The End Of Venture Capital As We Know It? — Last week, something turned. We found out that not only are we in a recession, but it started a year ago. Tech layoffs went into overdrive (12,000 at AT&T, 600 at Adobe, 130 at Real Networks), bringing the total unemployed tech workforce to at least 90,000, by our count. Even Facebook decided to indefinitely postpone an earlier plan to allow employees to sell some stock privately. One likely consideration in Facebook’s about-face is that outside investors may no longer be willing to buy Facebook stock at the already-lowered $4 billion internal valuation the plan called for, never mind the... [Tags: batten down the hatches, carnage, downturn, endowments, facebook]

Part Ten In a Monthly SeriesWe may be heading into the holidays, and soon will come the end of 2008, with an eye toward 2009, and all the change that comes with it. But before the year is up, I thought it made sense to highlight five blogs that I've recently discovered that you may not know. On louisgray.com, it's not all about me. It's about finding new services, new ways to share information, new authors, and new opinions. That's why you're seeing some outstanding posts from our new writers, and why each month, I highlight five new blogs that... [Tags: bloggers, business innovation, business metrics, chris brogan, downturn]

US Recession May Be Worst Since World War II — Bloomberg News reports that the massive job losses in the U.S. last month signal the nation may be headed towards its worst recession since World War II: The U.S. economy may be headed for its deepest and longest recession since World War II as mounting job losses take their toll on consumer confidence and spending. Employers cut payrolls last month at the fastest pace in 34 years as the unemployment rate rose to 6.7 percent, the highest level since 1993. The 533,000 drop brought cumulative job losses this year to 1.91 million, the Labor Department said yesterday in Washington... ...At... [Tags: bank of japan, benchmark rate, bloomberg news, consumer confidence, deflation]

Recession Update: What's Killing SOA? — Considering the downturn, there are new things that are killing SOA, and perhaps a few things that have been killing SOA all along.... [Tags: downturn, recession]

AT&T Layoffs: The Tip of a Telecom Downturn — ... [Tags: amp, downturn, layoffs, telecom]

Intersil Guides Down For Q4 Yet Again — Intersil (ISIL) on Wednesday afternoon warned that its fourth quarter results would be below its previous outlook. I would note that the company’s previous guidance, offered in late October, had already disappointed the Street. The company, which makes high-performance analog semiconductors, says it now sees Q4 revenue between $125 million and $135 million, down 38% to 43% from Q3. Previous guidance had been for a 20%-25% revenue decline. The Street had been expecting $168.3 million. Intersil sees non-GAAP profits for the quarter of 9-12 cents a share; the consensus was for 22 cents. Intersil said in a statement that the... [Tags: analog devices, analog semiconductors, cfo, consensus, distributor inventory]

Fitch Ad Forecast: Online Revs Look Stable; But Some Cities Could Be Without Daily Papers By 2010 — The current ad recession could extend past 2009 and closely resemble the period during the 2001 downturn, when revenues were down 6- 9 percent in real terms, according to credit rater Fitch's latest media forecast (free registration req.) However, there is one big difference between then and now that might mask the pain somewhat. Seven years ago, when advertising revs plunged, the industry was coming off three years of annual gains ranging from 8- to 11 percent, mostly driven by the dot-com bubble. Since coming back from the dark days of '01, the industry's growth has been fairly restrained. --... [Tags: blackbe, cpm, credit rater, dark days, digit increases]

Global Interest Rates Cuts To Spearhead Fight Against Financial Crisis — Thailand led a new round of global interest rates cuts on Wednesday, with countries from Europe to New Zealand expected to follow in the next few days to fight an unrelenting financial crisis. In London, the British government said it would help families and small businesses survive an impending downturn. But it made no mention of measures to force banks to lend more as it laid out a policy agenda for a difficult year ahead.... [Tags: banks, british government, downturn, europe, few days]

Cellphone industry faces downturn — The cellphone industry, one of the last bastions of economic growth, is now also expected to post negative growth in 2009. New research indicates that after ten full years of unprecedented growth, mobile phone shipments are contracting as consumers abandon the usual upgrade cycle and choose to stick with their current cellphones over an extended period of time.... [Tags: bastions, cellphones, consumers, downturn, economic growth]

Recession's Upside: It'll Be Easier To Cut Useless Marketing Plans — Maybe it's the feeling of having a great new job as the economy crumbles, but Peter Daboli, the new head of engagement measurement firm Bunchball, has found a silver lining for advertisers coming from this recession. In an AdAge op-ed, the Yahoo's former chief of insights says that as marketers cut their ad budgets in line with the downturn, they probably won't notice any difference in the effectiveness of their advertising. The reason is most marketing plans are bloated and focused, too heavily in Daboli's view, on pushing impressions and not enough on… engagement. And it's not just overvaluing the... [Tags: adage, advertisers, amp, budgets, bunchball]

Conde Nast's Flip Goes Flop: Closing Its Teen Social Network — When news came out that Conde Nast was launching its teen social media site Flip.com, back in 2006, Staci had a very pertinent question: "Can Conde Nast, which has been so good at matching demographics with ideas for print, create an online place appealing enough to catch and keep teen girls attention among so much competition?" Now as it has announced that it is closing Flip.com, the answer seems to be, unfortunately, no. The site will close down on Dec 16th, according to a note sent out to users, reported by FishbowlNY. "If you have any flipbooks that you would... [Tags: closure, conde nast, condenet, defection, demographics]

Whither Goest Thou, Stock Market? — How bad is this stock market? So bad that even those of us old enough to remember the Johnny Carson routine can't think of an appropriate zinger. Yes, I know the market has made gains today, and things don't look quite as bad as they did in the recent trough. Still, take a look at this chart. On this chart each block represents a year and each column represents a range of return on the S&P index. Over on the right side are those lucky years where the index has soared upward from 50-60%. In the middle are the more... [Tags: amp, asset management, comers, crash, decline]

AlwaysOn Venture Summit: Angels still finding opportunities in downturn — However ominous the title may have been, the late afternoon panel "Is Angel and Early Stage Investing Dead?" at the AlwaysOn Venture Summit proved to be more cautiously optimistic than...... [Tags: afternoon panel, angel, angels, downturn, late afternoon]

Palm needs a hand as Q2 revenues see drastic decline — Things are not looking good for Palm as it continues to slide into dangerous territory amidst harsh economic times. The handset manufacturer announced imminent layoffs earlier this month and now it has released preliminary financial results for Q2 of the fiscal year 2009 which are abysmal at best. Palm’s revenue in Q2 looks as though it will come in just north of $190 million, an astounding 50+ percent drop off from Q1 in which the company took in $370 million in revenues. A statement from Ed Colligan, Palm’s president and CEO: We are seeing unprecedented dynamics in the global... [Tags: dangerous territory, difficult period, downturn, drastic decline, economic times]

More Gawker Layoffs, Even As Ad Revenues Climb 39% — About a month ago, Gawker Media owner Nick Denton scared the crap out of everyone saying ad revenues could plummet as much as 40% during the current downturn. Since then, Gawker Media's revenues are actually up -- just under 40%, he says. Specifically, Gawker Media's November 2008 ad revenues were 39% higher than than they were in November 2007. So wherefrom all this growth amid all the gloom? (Before we continue, let's all pause to wonder if and how much Denton benefits from his own doom and gloom public service announcements. For one, it must nice to be able to... [Tags: business model, carnevale, doom and gloom, downturn, editorial assistant]