Online Ads, Quarterly Earnings | featured news

Yahoo said its profit rose 36% as the struggling Internet pioneer showed signs of continuing its slow but steady rebound under Mayer. But its shares fell after-hours on signs of decay in sales of display ads.

Shares in AOL have jumped 14% after the US internet firm reported a sharp rise in advertising revenues. Advertising sales jumped 7% to $340m (£212m), boosting net profit for the third quarter to $20.8m, compared with a loss of $2.6m a year ago.

Microsoft said Thursday that an accounting adjustment to reflect a weak online ad business led to its first quarterly loss in its 26 years as a public company. The software company had warned that it was taking a $6.2 billion charge because its 2007 purchase of online ad service aQuantive hasn't yielded the returns envisioned by management. The non-cash adjustment is something companies do when the value of their assets decline. Microsoft Corp. paid $6.3 billion for aQuantive, only to see rival Google Inc. expand its share of the online ad market.

An advertising industry group says revenue from Internet advertising in the U.S. hit $8.4 billion in the first three months of the year. That's the highest for the first quarter, up 15 percent from $7.3 billion in the same period last year.

Google’s core business, search advertising, seems so far to have weathered the economic doldrums that have hurt other sites and publications relying on ads.

The New York Times Company reported that first-quarter net income dropped 57.6 percent, to $5.4 million, as print advertising remained depressed and About.com revenue fell.