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To: Duane Greg who wrote (32957)	10/20/1999 6:40:00 PM
From: Tim-A.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 41369

Duane, the ad backlog represents deals where a company makes, say, a 4 year commitment to buy $4M of advertising on AOL. AOL isn't paid all that money in the first year so they can't take it as revenue (otherwise they'd have a gigantic accounts receivable number as well as major problems with the SEC). So, the revenue is booked at $1M per year, or however the deal is structured, and they report the remainder as part of the backlog. That's the way I read it, although I'm no accountant!

To: Duane Greg who wrote (32957)	10/20/1999 6:53:00 PM
From: Andreas	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 41369

Don't take this the wrong way but you are pretty much out in right field as far as your understanding of ad revenues. Most of the 2 billion in ad revenues isn't booked because it isn't scheduled to appear on aol's site until a future date. Nonetheless, advertisers have committed for a future date. For example, Ford Motor may have signed up for 1,000,000 in advertising to appear in the June through December of 2000. What aol is saying is that they have committed advertisers totalling 2,000,000,000 which will appear on aol's site at some time in the future.

To: Duane Greg who wrote (32957)	10/21/1999 2:09:00 AM
From: chester lee	Respond to of 41369

DG, A backlog is not the same as a backorder. A backlog is a future (planned) order not yet due. A backorder is a current order that is late. The former is business waiting to happen. The later is business that may go away. In the definition of a backlog is that they are future customer orders. i.e. You buy hamburgers from macdonalds. You intend to buy 1000 big macs each day for the next 31 days, starting today. From Macdonald's point of view, they booked 31,000 burgers today, but they have not made them, and you do not want them (yet). Since 30,000 (of the 31,000) present future orders, they are counted as backlogs. A backorder is when you want all 31,000 today, but Micky-D' can only make 1000. In this case the backorder is 30,000. This 30,000 would be immediate sales, if Micky-D made them. Chester