Yahoo ad selling business performs badly, Alibaba the only hope

Yahoo posted disappointing results late Tuesday reporting dropping sales and a floundering ad business, as CEO Marissa Mayer attempts to turn around the aging company.
Sales for the quarter ending were $1.08 billion, down 4 percent from the $1.14 billion reported during the same quarter last year. Yahoo said that revenues fell by 4 percent, to $1.08 billion from the year-ago quarter.
Yahoo's profit was $270 million, a 19 percent drop from the $331 million reported last year. This brought net earning per share to $0.26, down 15 percent.
"Our top priority is revenue growth and by that measure, we are not satisfied with our Q2 results," Mayer said in a statement. "While several areas showed strength, their growth was offset by declines."
Yahoo continues to post decent numbers largely due to its sizable investment in e-commerce giant Alibaba, which is expected to go pubic next month. Yahoo also negotiated selling fewer Alibaba shares during the IPO, bringing down its share to 140 million shares from 208 million shares.
Estimates suggest that Alibaba's IPO could raise as much as $150 billion, earning Yahoo a sizable profit from its investment in the company. Yahoo CFO Kenneth Goldman said that the company would share at least half of its post-tax profits with shareholders.
Mayer has made a concerted effort to add fresh faces to Yahoo's workforce drive more content and develop innovative products through acquisitions to bolster the company's performance. But these figures show that despite those efforts, the company is still struggling financially.
Yahoo, once the top seller of online ads, has been steadily losing its market share to Google and Facebook. According to eMarketer, the overall market is expected to grow 23.8 percent this year, but Yahoo will only have a 6 percent share, down from the 7.1 percent it had last year.