Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions). Our first question comes from line of Colin Sebastian with Lazard Capital. Please proceed.
Paul Weaver - Lazard Capital
Hi. This is [Paul Weaver] for Colin. Thanks for taking my question. I apologize I had trouble downloading the prepared remarks of the website. I am only just looking at it on EDGAR, so I apologize if you answered this in the prepared remarks. But I was hoping you give us some color on what advertisers are saying about budgets for next year. And also, if you could give us some color on just the general ad market, display, lead gen, also paid search costs?
Greg Strakosch
Well, in terms of the general market, customers are still cautious. But I would definitely say that the worst is behind us. So in terms of, if you go back to beginning of this year, there was a lot of fear in the marketplace, and customers it was hard to even get a meeting with these customers, they don’t want to waste our time.
Now, from an activity standpoint, there is a lot of activity. There are a lot of discussions about 2010. But in terms of what’s happening right now, customers are still very cautious. So I would say, we are basically at this point where the market is stabilized, the worst is behind us. But it’s before, like I say, it’s too early to say, hey, recovery is definitely here.
But in terms of, if you think about the budget process, which most companies do, during this time period, a year ago, you were dealing with Lehman Brothers and AIG and there was a lot of fear in the market and that was reflected very much in 2009 budgets. Customers are definitely much more optimistic about their business today and I think that will be reflected in their budgets next year. Although we are not expecting there to be a huge increase, we definitely expect a better operating environment.
Don Hawk
And this is Don. Was the second part of that question about display versus lead gen versus page search costs?
Paul Weaver - Lazard Capital
Yes.
Don Hawk
Okay. I’ll take that piece. So our business is maybe a little different than consumer business you see may follow, and if we are on the online side of our business, primarily lead gen, and we have a lot of programs that combined both lead gen and display. So the trends that we are seeing with regard to display, for example, might be different than what you are seeing in the overall consumer market.
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