AOL officially split, but revenue tumbles and ad sales anemic

When you have something like Batman: The Dark Knight to talk about it's safe to say that Time Warner doesn't want to yap a whole lot about AOL. There's a good reason for that: AOL revenue fell 16 percent in the second quarter and advertising revenue for the online unit was anemic, up 2 percent.

On the bright side, Time Warner (statement) did confirm that it is splitting AOL into two separate parts--access and advertising. One unit if not both will be offloaded.

AOL revenue fell 16 percent to $1.1 billion in the second quarter due to a 29 percent decline in subscription revenue. Advertising revenue was up 2 percent in the quarter. Time Warner said AOL's advertising revenue was helped by paid search and third party ads, but display advertising fell. Operating income fell 36 percent to $230 million. Time Warner appeared to provide less detail about AOL than it has in previous earnings statements.

Overall, Time Warner reported revenue of $11.6 billion in the second quarter, up 5 percent from a year ago. Films and cable fueled the results. The company had earnings per share of 22 cents a share, down from 25 cents a year ago.