Jeffrey Lindsay believes that mobile ads won’t supply even one-twentieth of either company’s total revenue at that point.  Peter Kafka reported, "He figures US mobile ads could generate $300 million for Yahoo in 2013 – about 4% of revenues."

And that’s actually the more optimistic of the two cases if you concentrate on percentages and look at things from a certain angle.  Kafka continued, "[H]e thinks Google, who dominates mobile search in the same way it does in the wired world, could generate $600 million – less than 2% of its revenues."

Given all of the energy that Google’s poured into its mobile efforts – think search, Android, the My Location feature, and so on – it’d be interesting to know whether the search giant agrees with Lindsay’s estimates and is just planning for the long-term, or is counting on things turning out better than he expects.

Anyway, if you’re interested in a broader perspective, Lindsay predicted that mobile ads would be worth $2.2 billion all together in 2013.

Google’s Cut? Forty Percent, Baby

Break down the numbers, Ashkan Karbasfrooshan wrote at WatchMojo, and Google’s take of the nearly $10 billion in US online ad revenue for the first half of 2007 counted for 40 percent.

Here’s how he broke down Google’s and the IAB’s numbers:

If you consider that Google did $7.531B in Q1 and Q2, and all online advertising was $10B, and that Google’s global sales

- represented 48% of total revenues in the second quarter of 2007, or $1.75B

- represented 47% of total revenues in the first quarter of 2007, or $1.81B.

The math suggests that Google did $3.57B from global, and (oh-oh) $7.531-$3.57 = $3.97 Billion in the US in Q1 andQ2.

Little wonder that it has been suggested Yahoo should give Google its search business, and let Google bring in the ad revenue for Yahoo.

24/7 Wall St. cited Bernstein Research’s report, to show how Yahoo could benefit by tossing the keys to Eric Schmidt and saying, "Drive that search business, Doc.":

Bernstein offered a second analysis based on Yahoo! outsourcing its search business to Google. If this was done, search revenue would rise 28% in 2008, and total revenue by 16% over current projections. Yahoo! could cut 25% of its head count dropping operating expenses by 17%. The combined benefit of these actions would improve operating income by 205% over current Wall St. estimates.

Tripling operating income isn’t something Yahoo’s board can brush away with a Steve Jobs rah-rah appearance just because of the avenue that tripling would take. We won’t be surprised if some of the big institutional investors out there start leaning on Jerry Yang to start giving this consideration.

Bernstein Bearish, Says YHOO Should Break Up

Not everyone shares the effervescent confidence conveyed to Yahoo management in a recent meeting featuring Steve Jobs. In fact, the company’s business has one investment firm bubbling hot under the collar.

A Reuters report picked up on Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Jeffrey Lindsay’s assessment of Yahoo, where the analyst believes Yahoo has a lot to gain from being rendered into little pieces:

The company, which lags Web search leader Google Inc and faces greater competition for its e-mail services, could be worth as much $45 per share with a dramatic overhaul that would include outsourcing its paid search, cutting staff by 25 percent and restructuring its graphic display advertising, according to Lindsay.

“It appears that Yahoo will not take bold measures to right the ship,” he wrote in a research report. “We believe that Yahoo still has a potentially high intrinsic value. We believe, however, that to stop the inevitable slide into irrelevance the management team must consider more radical actions and strategies.”

With regards to the staff cuts Lindsay advocates, note that Yahoo’s management meeting brought more than 300 people with titles of vice-president or higher to the all-day session. Yahoo brings in millions of visitors to its properties each month, but do they need that many executives to manage the infrastructure supporting those visitors?

Lindsay would make one big infrastructure change to Yahoo, a “Back To The Future” style return to Google managing Yahoo’s search marketing endeavors. Yahoo has long lagged behind Google

They weren’t Web 2.0 people. They weren’t bloggers. They had no idea that they were in the presence of Internet famous PR hottitude (go vote for me ), according to ValleyWag. They were PR people, though. Well, some of them were, and others were just normal people with normal jobs, or even online marketers that just don’t care about blogs as they see the click-through value for ad buys.

So, one asked me what I do at the firm. I noted that I am a PR person that specializes in blogging – note that emphasis, as I will get back to it later.

His comment was that blogs are a fad that are going to be killed by lawsuits. Which, well, might be true. Hell, I wrote about the issue of blogs and libel so long ago, I forget what I wrote. And, well, the Maine case makes me seem prescient.

Recently, though, Daniel Bernstein of Bite PR wrote that the killer app of PR is blogging and needs to be handled by the senior counselors of public relations. And, well, he got slammed by some top bloggers – David Parmet wraps it up quite well in a couple of posts, including fisking Bernstein’s response – and Bernstein did an okay job defending against the rabid fans of PR blogging.

It’s wrong though. Yes, blogs are an important part of PR, and will continue to be. And, blogs are giving way to vlogs (check the SF article) which are an even better form of viral communications. And, while I love being known as a go-to guy for understanding blogs at work, at the end of the day, I am a PR person that has a blogging specialty.

In my pundit post (yes, the Wings ran into a hot goalie), Kami Huyse and Mike Sacks both posted good points and questions. Huyse noted that she disagreed that blogging is going to be its own separate practice area, but that it is important to have the other skills as well. Sacks noted that blogging is not complex enough to have its own practice group, and that the strategy is pretty simple.

Well, they are both right and wrong, but I can agree with their points. Blogging does not need its own separate practice area because it is merely another avenue for media relations. Yes, it’s different than straight media relations, but it is about building relationships with bloggers and being smart. This is something that all PR people should have. And, while blogging and consumer generated media seems simple, it is so fraught with land mines it is never simple strategy, but more complex than straight media. It’s a mix of guerilla and word of mouth and relationship building … with a light hand. But, does that mean it needs it’s own separate practice area? Nope.

That’s what I mean by PR person with blog specialty. It’s what we should all be – a generalist with skills in a wide range of PR practices. We should all be able to pick up the phone (yes, the phone) and pitch a reporter. We should all be able to email a blogger and smartly reach out to them. We should all be able to write a tactical and strategic plan for a client. It’s all the skills together.

And, that is what matters. The killer app in public relations is not blogging, nor media relations, nor guerrilla marketing, nor word of mouth campaigns. The killer app in PR is counsel and strategy, a part of PR that has gone missing, and a big reason we lost the seat at C-suite table (well, this is my belief). Yes, I have written in the past about that marketing and communications are coming to a convergence, but the seat at the table is more marketing than communications.

Well, we should take it back. The seat should be communications because we tend to be more transparent than other disciplines, because we are at the front lines of public relations (remember, that the P stands for public, not press). We see what is happening – and see it faster because of blogs and CGM – and we know how to react and be smart about it.

The PR seat at the C-suite table should be agencies and people that can think strategically and tactically, understand the new media landscape that is both CGM and mainstream, and be able to talk to all groups. The killer app in PR is the skills we should have – but lost along the way – that we need to find again to push us forward in marketing communications.

Then, we can leave the kiddies table and join the C-suite adults.

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Jeremy Pepper is the CEO and founder of POP! Public Relations, a public relations firm based in Arizona, USA.

He authors the popular Musings from POP! Public Relations blog which offers Jeremy’s opinions and views – on public relations, publicity and other things.

Papers released so far include:

1. Chris Chesher – Paper – Blogs and the crisis of authorship
2. ZedTycho.com: Kevin Leversee, Barry Steele, Scott Farrell & Mark Neely – Panel – Desire Lines, Memes & the Blogosphere
3. Trevor Cook – Paper – Up against reality: Blogging and the cost of content
4. Senator Andrew Bartlett – Presentation – Blogs and Politics in Australia and globally
5. Zenon Chaczko, Venkatesh Mahadevan & Emil Wajs-Chaczko – Paper – Blogging as an Effective Tool in Teaching and Learning Software Systems Development
6. Robert Ackland – Paper – Mapping the U.S. Political Blogosphere: Are Conservative Bloggers More Prominent?
7. Glen Fuller – Paper – The eventual potential of Blogs
8. James Farmer – Paper – Centred Communication: Weblogs and aggregation in the organisation
9. Gavin Sade – Paper – Weblogs as Open Constructive Learning Environments
10. Carol Cooper & Lyn Boddington – Paper – Assessment by blog: Ethical case studies assessment for an undergraduate business management class
11. TAN Yuh-Huann, TEO Eng-Hui, AW Wai-Lin Alice, LIM Wei-Ying – Paper – Portfolio Building in Chinese Language Learning Using Blogs

Overseas Speakers coming include:

The only downer of Blogtalk Downunder is some criticism that they seem to attracted about the cost of the event. It is costing $175 ($AU) which some believe is too high. James has responded here with how they worked out the pricing and some of the reasons its not cheaper. I personally think that $175 is a very reasonable price for a conference of this standard of venue, speakers, food etc.

Having said this – most Ausse bloggers are not blogging on a professional level and don’t have the backing of a business, university or other organization to bankroll their trip to Sydney. Perhaps this is where some of the criticism comes from. It is something of a catch 22.

I also have a little niggling feeling that perhaps Blogtalk is pitching itself at a higher (more intellectual or academic) level than where the Average Aussie Blogger is at. In reading the papers released so far I’m very impressed by the intelligent, well thought out presentations – but am left wondering how accessible they are for most bloggers in Australia. Whilst pitching at this level will lead to some wonderful sessions – it could also be narrowing the potential attendance.

I don’t have any real answers – just tossing thoughts around in the hope that something is productive.

I’ve personally decided that I can’t make it to Sydney for Blogtalk – I’d love to go but partly due to the finances and partly because we’ve got so much going on at the moment it doesn’t look feasible. I’ll be following on via the blogs of those attending however and no doubt will be posting plenty of wish I was there’ posts that week.

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Darren Rowse is the founder of ProBlogger.net, a blog about the many ways of adding an income stream to blogs.

Darren owns and writes a variety of blogs including Digital Photography Blog and Camera Phone
Zone. He is also a co-founder of the Breaking News Blog Collective.