MSN Revenue Breakdown

MSN divides its revenue into two segments: MSN Networks, which consists of advertising revenue from free Web sites such as MSN.com and free services such as MSN Messenger, and MSN Subscriptions, which consists of subscription revenue from services such as MSN Premium, Hotmail Extra Storage, and MSN dial-up Internet access. As this chart shows, MSN Networks revenue has been steadily increasing since mid-2002 and is largely responsible for MSN’s revenue growth and recent profitability.

The first two columns of this chart show approximate quarterly revenue for MSN Networks and MSN Subscriptions for the last eight quarters. (Microsoft does not report these numbers, but reports both percentage and dollar growth in each segment compared with the previous year’s quarter. Using these growth statistics and total MSN revenues, it’s possible to approximate the underlying quarterly revenue numbers for each segment.) The third column shows MSN’s total reported revenue in each quarter. The fourth column shows MSN’s quarterly profit or loss, reported in accordance with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) except where noted.