Has the Great Online Ad Comeback Already Stalled?

Are you one of those types who gets nervous when lots of people start announcing that the worst is over and that happy days are here again, or at least on the way? Then you’ll be reassured by a couple of recent research notes warning that the online ad comeback we’ve been hearing about has been postponed.

Earlier this month, Benchmark analyst Clayton Moran announced that he was seeing “softening online ad trends” and that “recent online activity indicates a further pull-back by large advertisers.” Per Eric Savitz at Tech Trader Daily, Moran cut his rating on Google (GOOG) in part because “large advertisers appear to reducing commitments heading into the summer…we are hearing that April and May were solid relative to expectations but indications for June through August are poor, thus tempering recent momentum.”

Now comes JMP Securities’ Sameet Sinha, also via Tech Trader, announcing that “budgets have declined as advertisers are not feeling as chipper anymore” and that “travel and finance continue to be weak, while retail is exhibiting mixed trends…the initial slivers of hope in May were premature.”

Unclear whether Moran and Sinha are talking about online ads across the board and whether they’re distinguishing between Google’s search ads and the display ads that Yahoo (YHOO) and Time Warner’s AOL (TWX) depend on.

For what it’s worth, my thoroughly undisciplined channel checks– whenever I talk to people who work at businesses that depend on Web ads, I ask them how sales are going–tell a more positive story. We’ll get a better idea in a month or so when the big public players start reporting Q2 numbers.

[Image credit: Filtran]