As long as there are plenty of internet IPOs, there will be good revenue for the portals, since the former take their IPO money and spend it advertising on the latter. The KOOP/AOL deal is a recent example of that kind of thing. I'd be more impressed with Yahoo's revenues if they came mostly from Colgate, Gillette, P&G, and other advertisers who don't need a stock offering to afford advertising.
Let a bear market cause the IPOs to dry up, wait three months and watch web advertising revenues drop. The whole thing is like the late 1980's, when developers would put up speculative office buildings and rent the space to real estate lawyers, architects, construction companies, other developers, etc. The banks thought they had mortgages on fully occupied buildings, until the tenants all went broke. |
