This was a day which could have gone either way. The markets recovered this morning despite weakness in overseas markets in reaction to yesterday's S&P downgrading of Portugal and Greece credit worthiness. Today came another S&P downgrade of Spain. Then the FOMC kept rates steady and maintained its "extended period" period for that no to low rate policy.

Here were today's unofficial closing bell levels:

Dow 11,045.27 +53.28 (0.48%)
Nasdaq 2,471.73 +0.26 (0.01%)
S&P 500 1,191.36 +7.65 (0.65%)

Despite the media slump that's been running alongside the worldwide recession, CBS (CBS) isn't having any trouble moving ad space for the Super Bowl.

The event is still more than a month from now, but the network reports having only a few commercial slots left for the big game. In fact, 95% of its 62 slots have moved, even with two of the most committed Super Bowl advertisers -- Pepsi (PEP) and General Motors (GRM) -- bowing out of the action. The first half is already sold out completely.

Advertising-supported content has become the dominant business model for the internet, as demonstrated by our (AOL, Time Warner, NYSE:TWX) recent change from a membership-based model. Advertising Age recently released its study of the 100 top advertisers and how they spend their advertising dollars. For all the brouhaha about the internet, traditional print advertising still dominates the marketing plans of the top corporations. A breakdown of 2006 expenditures by ad distribution platform shows --

1. Magazines -- $29.83 billion
2. Newspapers -- $29.80 billion
3. Network TV -- $27.16 billion
4. Spot TV -- $17.23 billion
5. Cable TV networks -- $16.75 billion
6. Radio -- $11.06 billion
7. Internet -- $9.75 billion
8. Syndicated TV -- $4.2 billion
9. Outdoor -- $3.83 billion

also see 2006 Advertising recap II- The big rollers

What kind of business has Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) lost to Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) in the online advertising business? Plenty, if you go by the estimates. It's that kind of midnight fear that caused Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to give his internet ad sales chief a call from a recent Hawaiian vacation. What prompted the action? No small potato -- Google announced that it was buying DoubleClick for $3.1 billion.

Was Microsoft's leader sweating out of desperation based on Google's existing advertising revenue dominance that seems to have Microsoft on the defensive like never before? Sure, Microsoft's been on the defensive before, but not when the stakes were this high -- we're talking a level approaching $3 billion a quarter of ad revenue with a cost that is relatively inexpensive (except for partner revenue share Google must pay out).

Although the on again / off again talks of Microsoft buying Yahoo! to try and beat Google have again fallen by the wayside, that does not mean Microsoft and Yahoo! may not partner to fend off the threat of losing all internet ad revenue to their collective largest competitor -- Google. Microsoft's Yusuf Mehdi, the internet ad head for the software maker, says that "Really the one and only thing is the volume of search ... but that's a big thing." Yep -- I agree. Google's numbers prove it.