Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Our first question is from William Morrison - ThinkEquity.
William Morrison - ThinkEquity
Tom, I would characterize the tone of the call as very bullish, yet your results fell below my estimates, and I believe consensus. The stock is trading off about 15%. Can you just describe where you came in? Because you don’t guide -- obviously, estimates are what they are -- but can you describe where the quarter came in relative to your expectations? Was this what you were expecting?
If you could also characterize how business trended specifically in the advertising business through the quarter. So was March stronger than January or vice versa? And then I’ve got a couple of follow-ups.
Thomas Clarke
Bill, it was our conscious decision to really put those resources from Promotions to deliver on both the redesigned Street.com and MainStreet. We thought that was critically important that we deliver that, because the increased demand we were seeing from the ad side as we looked into the future really necessitated that and I didn’t want that to be a hangover going into the second quarter.
Getting to your point, did it meet our expectations or was it where we thought it would be? Yes it was. I mean the non-cash expenses a little bit, you could talk about that, but in general it is exactly where we thought we would be.
As for the advertising, we saw a little bit more strength as we went through the quarter but we may be a little unique in that because again, until the site actually launched on February 5, we showed advertisers, we pre-sold it, but until they could actually see it and see how it worked people were holding, so we did see more strength towards the end of the quarter than we did going into the quarter.
William Morrison - ThinkEquity
So just to be clear, I was not surprised by Promotions, but I had $6.8 million in advertising revenue and you did $6 million, so personally your advertising revenue fell way below my number.
I just want to be clear, your internal plans were for somewhere around $6 million in ad revenue?
Thomas Clarke
Let’s put it this way, Bill. I don’t want to comment on your numbers because we don’t give guidance, but we had 18% growth in the ad business. We are pleased with that. Every time you launch a site you get a couple of bips and bumps here and there, but in general we’re very pleased with the way the ad number came in.
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