What earnings reports have revealed about ads

(AP) - Here are highlights of recent quarterly earnings reports from selected Internet, media and advertising companies and what they say about the state of spending on advertising:

April 15: Google Inc. says revenue surged 23 percent from last year, its best growth rate since the summer of 2008. Prices paid for Google ads were 7 percent higher than the average at the same time last year.

April 16: Gannett Co., the nation's largest newspaper publisher, reports its smallest drop in ad revenue in more than a year: 8 percent. CEO says year is "off to a great start."

April 20: Yahoo Inc. reports first revenue growth in 18 months. Although total ad revenue increased just 3 percent from the prior year, display advertising rose 20 percent. That category includes online billboards that companies use to promote brands.

Omnicom Group Inc., which owns marketing agencies, reports that its revenue was stronger in the U.S. than in Europe, but the CEO says that the overall business environment "continues to stabilize and improve."

April 22: The New York Times Co. says advertising revenue fell 6.1 percent from a year ago, the smallest decline since the third quarter of 2007. Company says print advertising trends in current quarter look even better.

McClatchy Co., which publishes The Miami Herald, The Sacramento (Calif.) Bee and other newspapers, says ad revenue fell 11.2 percent in first quarter from a year ago. That was better than the 20.5 percent decline in the last three months of 2009.

April 28: Comcast Corp., which owns cable channels distributed nationwide and sells ad time on other channels shown to its cable TV subscribers, says its advertising revenue jumped 23.5 percent from a year earlier.

April 29: Viacom Inc., which owns cable channels such as MTV, says its worldwide advertising revenue climbed 3 percent from a year ago. U.S. ad revenue rose 1 percent. Viacom's CEO predicts that ads will cost more in this spring's "upfronts," which is when advertisers bid on commercial time for the rest of the year.

InterPublic Group of Cos., which owns advertising agencies, says business is improving as marketers are more willing to spend money on ads.

April 30: WPP Group PLC, another owner of ad agencies, sees indications of an improvement in "client attitudes" and notes that "2010 has started in a very different way to how 2009 ended."

May 4: News Corp. says it is seeing an increase in consumer spending and advertising. That helped the company's cable channels increase their operating income 38 percent in the latest quarter from a year ago. The newspaper division, which includes The Wall Street Journal, increased its operating income more than fourfold.

May 5: Time Warner Inc. says the latest quarter was its first in a year and a half with growth in advertising revenue. That included increases in revenue from commercials on the Turner cable channels and from print ads at the Time Inc. magazines.

CBS Corp. says its local broadcasting revenue rose 19 percent with the help of higher spending on political ads. The CBS network saw a 25 percent jump in advertising revenue, powered by the most-watched Super Bowl in history.

May 7: Washington Post Co. says advertising revenue at its namesake newspaper fell 8 percent in the first quarter from the same period of 2009. That marked a slight improvement from a 9 percent drop in the previous quarter.

May 11: The Walt Disney Co. says advertising revenue fell at ABC because fewer viewers were watching its programs, but the network was able to sell more ads and charge more for them.