Large companies, like large ships, turn slowly. So while I think it's way too hasty to claim, as one analyst does, that AOL could be "eliminated from the surface of the Internet" in a matter of months, these numbers are still concerning.

AOL's new content strategy wants to turn it into a hyper-global-newspaper, manically focused on the riding the zeitgeist, and churning out reader-friendly content. In my opinion, it basically does that. In advertisers' opinions, it falls short:

Traffic at AOL has fallen 5 percent this year to about 105 million monthly unique readers [Note: That's a huge number.], according to comScore. People visiting AOL news dropped off about 11 percent to 29 million uniques during the same period. Advertising revenue at AOL plunged 27 percent in the second-quarter though the company warned about declines due to an overhaul of the sales structure. Still, during the same period Internet advertising revenues overall in the U.S. jumped 14 percent, the highest second-quarter revenue on record, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PwC. AOL ad sales even underperformed newspapers, where Internet advertising rose 14 percent.

Read the full story at Reuters.

