The era of ad contraction: Summer looks slow for online advertising

The consensus as of late seems to be that while ad sales have been down, they are stabilizing. Benchmark Capital analyst Clayton Moran says not so fast. In a report this morning on Google (NSDQ: GOOG), he says that his “channel checks” show that while there was indeed an upswing in sales activity in March through mid May, sales in the summer months will drop back again. “Street sentiment has turned positive as economic indicators and online ad trends stabilized in April, but more recent online activity indicates a further pull-back by large advertisers,”  he says.