Nov 18

• Things aren't bright for online advertising's near term, according to Citi analyst Mark Mahaney. "October spending in display saw a sharp deceleration from September as advertisers continue to worry about the macro environment," he wrote. "Premium, guaranteed advertising, especially, has been highly impacted across all verticals."  Mark does note however that there are some sunny patches such as vertical ad networks.  After all there's only 300 or so of them out there.  I see some consolidations/filtering out in the next six to nine months, if not sooner.
• The real big headliner today is about Jerry Yang stepping down from Yahoo's top post.  This isn't suprising to me, and in fact I'm suprised it took this long. WSJ blog names several successors both inside and outside of Yahoo who could fill his shoes.  Among them Meg Whitman, Tim Armstrong from Google, Kevin Johnson of Microsoft (who was supposed to run Yahoo after acquisition) and Susan Decker Yahoo's current President.  I predict an annoucement before Thanksgiving.  The successor?  I think an outsider will be picked, someone who has a proven record of turning around companies with an operations or financial background.  Who that will be remains to be seen.