NP: Scott Amendola Band, Cry

Last week Microsoft reported a stronger-than-expected fiscal first quarter. This comes after other tech giants Yahoo!, Intel and Google all beat Wall Street expectations as well.

Two things immediately spring to mind here. First, the results from Google and Yahoo! should bode well for my employment prospects, assuming I stay in online marketing. Search marketing did better than analysts expected for Google, and even display advertising got a boost over at Yahoo!, and if advertisers are starting to spend again, advertising agencies are going to be able to hire those higher-level number-crunchers that they've been holding back on for the last six to nine months.

Second, can we please get new analysts for this industry? Clearly, the current crop has no idea what they're talking about.

To that end, I still expect the holiday season to do much better for online advertising and ecommerce than anyone is predicting right now. Between advertisers shifting dollars to online for the accountability, shoppers continuing to shift to online for the deals, and the timing of rebranding efforts for both Microsoft's Bing and Yahoo!, I see a lot of momentum moving in that direction. It might not be double-digits, in terms of year-over-year ecommerce growth -- although I wouldn't rule it out since last Christmas was a bit soft -- but it might be pretty close.