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FROM MARC LESNIC
When this story broke, Marc Lesnic phoned me and asked if I could come to this board and convey what he has learned through his inner circle of contacts.
THe conversation was a bit rushed and jumped around a bit, so allow me to hit the major parts:
1) Google and Yahoo were both “served” court documents back in October of last year. They kept all their gaming ad’s running untill after the Super Bowl and March Madness, then “voluntarily” complied… at their leisure. What does that tell us, looking in from the outside?
2) Many believe that Google/Overture have no desire to pull these ads. They realize that we will spend out millions of advertising dollars elsewhere… creating greater competition for them… never a good business move to create more competition…. It’s thought that, based on the Presidential elections this fall (and who wins), the gambling ads could make a comeback before Christmas.
3) The actions Google/Overture have taken were not unforeseen, and the smart, hard working people in this industry will once again rise to the occasion and find ways past this… just like we did with payment processing. Will we hurt in the short term? Yes. We will survive it? Sure.
This has been an on again, off again issue for the big portal sites for years.
I remember years ago when Yahoo banned casino advertising for awhile. Then they brought it back. Then they banned it again.
Like you said, they WANT our money …
But it’s just not worth the legal risks to go up against the U.S. government. The Feds are making noise about cracking down on online gambling again, and these are huge companies that don’t need the hassle or bad PR that goes along with being targeted for a government investigation.
Also, the oline advertising business has picked up dramatically recently. That’s why Yahoo’s stock jumped over 16% yesterday when they released their earnings report. Back when they were hurting for money, online gambling, RX and porn were keeping them going. Now that the mainstream ad revenue is booming they are not so desperate so they can afford to turn their backs on the advertisers that could bring them legal problems — even if it does mean losing millions of dollars worth of revenue.
I’ve always had the feeling this will be a temporary black-out on google’s and yahoo’s part.
Too may advertising dollars in this industry, and that’s the bottom line.
They’ll take the moral high ground, get the publicity, and when it blows over, they’ll silently slip back into the casino market and rake in all that dough.
