• by February 11, 2004

Is the Monster coming back to life? And will all of that high profile Super Bowl advertising pay off this year? The online jobs giant today reported a fourth quarter profit earning $12.1 million or 11 cents per share. Not too shabby considering an economy that continues to sputter and compared to the same period a year ago when it posted a $51 million loss for the quarter. Quarterly sales nudged four percent to $170.8 million from $164.4 million compared to the same period a year ago.

While Monster had a decent (modestly so) fourth quarter, it posted a warning on its profit outlook for the current quarter. That spurred shares of Monster to fall 78 cents, or three percent, to $24.85 in after-hours trading yesterday.

Another little cloud: Sales in Monster's advertising and communications unit, which places ads in offline media for companies recruiting employees, tumbled seven percent to $35.3 million. The company's directional marketing unit, which includes its Yellow Pages and Monster Moving businesses, fared a little better, slipping just two percent to $26 million.

For those of us trying to read the tea leaves, Monster's earnings report is a bit of a mixed bag. Overall, political pundits and labor reports seem to indicate the economy has rebounded, at least tentatively. The classified ads in the media industry point to a bit of an improvement. MediaPost's job listings, as well as those in other trade media, seem to be coming back. Online media strategists are especially sought after -- at least that's what I've noticed.

One of the latest examples of growth in the online media sector is aQuantive, the parent company of Avenue A, iFrontier, and AtlasDMT. Today, aQuantive said its Atlas DMT unit will acquire Seattle-based NetConversions. The move marks the second acquisition by Atlas in two months: Atlas recently picked up Go Toast, a Denver-based paid search management and optimization tech provider. With NetConversions, Atlas says it will have even more analytics firepower in its arsenal.

NetConversions will be called Atlas NetConversions and compliment Atlas' Atlas Vital Signs metrics technology. The key thing about the acquisition is that it gives Atlas a stronger ability to offer advertisers a more sophisticated view about where a consumer abandons a transaction or purchase and helps diagnose how conversion rates can be improved. Surely, that's a good thing.