MSN: Microsoft Predicts Online Ad Growth
Reuters | at | by Mike
Microsoft Corp. on Monday broke ranks with its struggling peers by forecasting 25 percent growth in online advertising for its MSN portal for the coming fiscal year in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. The loss-making MSN Web portal is banking that deep-pocketed advertisers in the automotive and financial services industries will pull more money away from the traditional advertising media of television and radio and invest it in online ads. Rivals Yahoo Inc., AOL-Time Warner's Internet unit AOL, and Spanish-American portal/Internet service provider (ISP) Terra Lycos have been hit particularly hard by the downturn in revenue from online advertising, upon which they remain highly dependent.