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A YouTube logo seen at the YouTube Space LA in Playa Del Rey, Los Angeles, California, United States October 21, 2015.

Lucy Nicholson | Reuters

The online advertising market continues to suffer, as heavyweights Alphabet and Microsoft reported disappointing sales during their most recent quarters.

YouTube advertising revenue dropped 2% year over year to $7.07 billion during the Google parent’s third quarter, missing analysts’ estimates of $7.42 billion. It was the first time YouTube’s ad revenue shrank on a year-over-year basis since the company started breaking out the division’s results in 2019.

Alphabet’s overall revenue growth drastically declined from 41% a year ago to 6%, underscoring how fears of a looming recession have caused companies to cut back on their advertising and marketing campaigns. Indeed, Chief Financial Officer Ruth Porat said during a call with analysts that YouTube’s revenue decline “primarily reflects further pullbacks in advertiser spends.”

Some of the advertisers that slowed their online advertising spending with Alphabet come from the financial services, insurance, loans and mortgage and crypto industries, said Alphabet chief business officer Philipp Schindler.

Last week, Snap set the tone for the online advertising market when it missed third-quarter analyst estimates with $1.13 billion in sales, sending its shares tumbling more than over 30% the next day. Snap attributed its poor sales to companies decreasing their marketing budgets” in response to the weak economy, the company said in a letter to investors.

Microsoft also reported a slowdown in its online advertising business.

Its search and news advertising business (including Bing and Microsoft News) reported sales growth of 16% in the September quarter, the first of its fiscal year, far below the 40% revenue growth it reported a year earlier. Indeed, the growth rate of that business has been shrinking each quarter of the past year, coinciding with the general downward trajectory of the entire online advertising market.

Additionally, Microsoft’s LinkedIn’s quarterly sales growth shrank to 17%, down from 42% during the same period in 2021.

Microsoft CFO Amy Hood told analysts during an earning calls that that “reductions in customer advertising spend, which also weakened later in the quarter, impacted search in advertising and LinkedIn marketing solutions.”

Meanwhile, Meta on Wednesday is expected to report its second-straight quarter of declining sales, underscoring the current turmoil in online advertising. Judging from the recent earnings reports of various tech giants, it’s unlikely the Facebook parent is going to report any signs that the online advertising market is set for a rebound.

Alphabet misses both revenue and EPS, slight upside on Google cloud

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Why Jim Cramer wants to load up on more shares of this DuPont spinoff

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Palantir tops estimates, boosts fourth-quarter guidance on AI adoption

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Palantir tops estimates, boosts fourth-quarter guidance on AI adoption

Alex Karp, chief executive officer of Palantir Technologies Inc., speaks during the AIPCon conference in Palo Alto, California, US, on March 13, 2025.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Palantir reported quarterly results that topped analysts’ estimates and issued better-than-expected guidance for the fourth quarter, attributing much of its strength to artificial intelligence. The stock rose about 1% in extended trading.

Here’s how the company did compared to LSEG estimates:

Earnings per share: 21 cents adjusted vs. 17 cents expected

Revenues: $1.18 billion vs. $1.09 billion expected

Palantir, which builds analytics tools for large companies and government agencies, said it expects revenue of about $1.33 billion for the current period, exceeding the $1.19 billion expected by analysts, according to LSEG.

The optimistic guidance comes even as the government shutdown stretches into its second calendar month, and potentially threatens some key contracts. Revenue in Palantir’s U.S. government business grew 52% in the quarter from a year ago to $486 million.

Government sales, particularly from military agencies, have been central to Palantir’s ongoing ascent. Over the years, Palantir has steadily beat out major legacy government contractors, and recently landed a deal worth up to $10 billion contract with the U.S. Army.

Palantir has also faced criticism over how its tools are being used by government agencies, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Total revenue in the quarter jumped 63% from $725.5 million a year ago, exceeding $1 billion for the second straight quarter. Net income more than tripled to $475.6 million, or 18 cents per share, from $143.5 million, or 6 cents per share, a year earlier.

For the full year, Palantir now expects about $4.4 billion in sales, topping the $4.17 billion forecast by Wall Street. The company also bumped up its full-year free cash flow outlook to between $1.9 billion and $2.1 billion.

Palantir’s U.S. commercial business more than doubled to $397 million. Total contract value for U.S. commercial deals closed more than quadrupled to $1.31 billion. Over the last few weeks, the company has announced new partnerships with Snowflake, Lumen and Nvidia.

Retail investors have helped drive Palantir’s skyrocketing stock price to new heights. The shares have surged more than 170% this year, lifting the company’s market cap past $490 billion and cementing the company among the most valuable technology names in the world.

Analysts have raised concerns about the stock, which trades at an extreme multiple relative to technology behemoths with far more revenue. In a letter to shareholders, CEO Alex Karp called out the “detractors” who have been “left in a kind of deranged and self-destructive befuddlement.”

“The reality is that Palantir has made it possible for retail investors to achieve rates of return previously limited to the most successful venture capitalists in Palo Alto,” he wrote. “And we have done so through authentic and substantive growth.”

In an interview with CNBC’s Morgan Brennan on Monday, Karp acknowledged that there’s excess in the AI market today and that some companies are eventually going to feel the pain.

“The strong companies are going to get much stronger, and the people pretending they’re doing stuff are going to disappear very quickly,” Karp said.

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Palantir is the best software company and it's not even close, says D.A. Davidson's Gil Luria

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Ether falls 7% following a multimillion dollar hack of a decentralized finance protocol

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Ether falls 7% following a multimillion dollar hack of a decentralized finance protocol

Representation of Ethereum, with its native cryptocurrency ether.

Dado Ruvic | Reuters

Ether fell as much as 9% on Monday, slipping below its critical $3,600 support level, shortly after a multimillion dollar hack affected a protocol on the token’s native network. 

The cryptocurrency, which is issued on Ethereum, was last down 6.6% at around $3,600, CoinMetrics data shows. That’s roughly 25% off its high of $4,885 hit on August 22

The coin’s tumble came after Ethereum-based decentralized finance protocol Balancer on Monday lost possibly more than $100 million in a hack. The exploit marks the latest in a series of bearish events that have put digital assets investors on tenterhooks over the past few weeks.

In mid-October, U.S. President Donald Trump announced “massive” tariffs on China over its restriction of rare earth exports, kicking off investors’ flight from crypto to risk-off assets such as gold. And although the president later walked back that threat, his comments sparked a sell-off that triggered cascading liquidations of highly leveraged digital asset positions

Last week, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell cautioned investors about expecting future rate cuts, adding to existing bearish market sentiment.     

“These events have put investors on uneasy footing as we roll into November,” Juan Leon, senior investment strategist at Bitwise, told CNBC. “Macro volatility notwithstanding, this October’s drawdown appears to have been a healthy, albeit sharp, de-leveraging event that flushed speculative excess from the market.”

Some stocks linked to digital assets are also coming under pressure. Coinbase shares were down nearly 4%, while Bitcoin treasury firm Strategy edged down more than 1%.   

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