The company’s fourth-quarter net earnings declined 5 percent year-over-year to $296 million, with revenue off 3 percent to $1.17 billion. And search advertising revenue dipped 3 percent year-over-year to $388 million.

Yahoo’s full-year revenue hit $5 billion, a far cry from the $6.3 billion it recorded in 2010. During the company’s earnings call Tuesday, Thompson said he’s spent “a lot of [his] time and attention”understanding the problems facing Yahoo’s display advertisingbusiness. Referring to the company’s results, Yahoo CFO TimMorse said during the earnings call, “we expected better.”

Thompson repeatedly said that it was too early to discuss how he plans to improve Yahoo’s performance. But he isolated the consumer data Yahoo holds as “the key component for driving innovation.”

“Our data may be Yahoo’s most underrated, underappreciated and underused asset,” he said.

Thompson said he aims to mine the data collected from Yahoo’s 702 million monthly unique visitors to improve the site experience for consumers, which he said would lead to more time spent on site and better results for advertisers.

Thompson and Morse downplayed the uncertainty that has dogged Yahoo throughout the fourth quarter and continues to follow the company. Morse—who took over as interim CEO after Carol Bartz’s ouster in September—termed the period “challenging” with “numerous distractions,” and Thompson said there was a lot of “commotion” surrounding the company.

Thompson’s appointment earlier this month may have settled the CEO question. ButYahoo co-founder Jerry Yang resigned from the company’s board last week, and questions persist over whether Yahoo will be sold.

As to the latter, all Thompson would say was that Yahoo “remains open to anything that’s good for our shareholders.”

Meanwhile, November 2011 prices were 3.6 percent lower than the year prior excluding distressed sales, and were 4.1 percent lower in October 2011 when compared with October 2010.

A month ago, the firm also reportedSeptember 2011 sales fell 2.4 percent.

Distressed sales include short sales and bank-owned property sales.

CoreLogic also reported U.S. home sales fell 1.4 percent in November, the fourth straight monthly sales decline.

Tablet sales could top 100 million worldwide in 2012, GfK Boutique Research director Steve Bambridge said in a Sunday CES news conference at the Las Vegas Venetian.

Amazon is competing aggressively against Apple, especially on price. Ten-inch Wi-Fi tablets, such as the iPad, can cost $400 to $500, while most 7-inch tablets start at $300. The 7-inch Amazon Kindle Fire is priced at $200. Kindle Fire is designed to deliver content provided by Amazon while the iPad uses iTunes.

Barnes and Noble’s Nook Tablet, $99 to $249, offers similar content to the Kindle Fire, from streaming movies to downloading books and access to Facebook.

While these big-name brands have succeeded, others have faltered for a number of reasons.

Rim in Motion’s debut tablet was a bit of a disappointment as the company ended up taking a $485 million third-quarter charge due to unsold Blackberry Playbook inventory.

RIM recently slashed PlayBook prices to $299 for the device, regardless of storage capacity. It comes with 16, 32 or 64 gigabytes. The temporary price cut ends Feb. 4, according to the Blackberry online store.

The HP TouchPad was pulled within weeks of its launch because of slow sales blamed in part on its $400 to $500 price. On the HP website it’s listed as “sold out,” though a 9.7-inch Wi-Fi version with 16 gigabytes sells for $269.88 on eBay.

While there have been hits and misses, more new tablets are coming. At CES, which officially starts Tuesday, Toshiba will unveil its newest and thinnest Tablet at 588 grams (slightly more than a 20 ounce bottle of soda), 10.1 inches wide and 7 mm thick, according to a company statement.

Asus will offer something a bit different with the Eee Pad Slider, featuring a pullout keyboard. Archos just released an 8-inch tablet, while Samsung is adding to its Galaxy lineup with an 8.9-inch Galaxy Tab.

For Velocity Micro it’s a pair of successors to its budget Cruz T408 tablet. The T507 Android 4.0 slate includes a 7-inch screen, a front facing camera and a sub-$150 price.

Meanwhile, the price for the larger 9.7-inch Cruz T510 tablet has not yet been announced.

“These products are an affirmation of what our focus will be for 2012 … smart and affordable consumer electronic devices,” said Randy Copeland, president and CEO of Velocity Micro.

Apple doesn’t even attend the show. But a recent report by the research firm Gartner Inc. expected tablets to see an explosion in sales over the next three years, selling 60 percent as many units as PCs by 2015.

The Gartner report expected the iPad will still have almost half the market by then.

Others are less optimistic. Canaccord Gentry estimates that iPads will account for 57 percent of all tablets sold this year. That figure was expected to decrease in the coming years. Apple’s share of the tablet market in 2010 was 82 percent, which declined to 65 percent last year.

Apple is reportedly preparing both new iPads for release this year. The DigiTimes technology news website expects the new iPad 3 to launch in March, with the iPad4 shipping in October.

The most general result concerned overall expectations for the economy in 2012. Almost half expect things to remain about the same – 47%, to be exact. Pessimists unfortunately outnumber optimists by a 29%-23% margin.

Looked at by age demographic, the older respondents were the most pessimistic. The mature 66+ crowd actually managed to be the most optimistic AND the most pessimistic. The chart below tells the tale. As a point of age reference, Echo Boomers are 18-34, Gen-Xers are 35-46, Boomers are 47-65 and Matures are 66+.

One thing is clear from the survey – the economic collapse experienced in 2008 has had a lasting impact on consumer money-handling habits. Gone are the days when revolving credit accounts and home refinancing kept stock moving off of American retail shelves and out of American warehouses. Consumers are still more apt to pay off rather than incur debt, and accumulating savings is much more top-of-mind than it was before the fall of 2008.

“There has been plenty of reporting on Americans’ financial concerns for the past several years,” commented THP as it scanned the downward trends. “However, looking at Americans’ current expectations for both their own finances as well as for the state of the nation, it seems that the bad news may not be over yet.”

The number we particularly like to see in the latest Harris survey is 45% — that is the percentage of respondents looking to cut overall household spending in 2012. We’d like to see it much lower, but it still beats the 49% of thrift-oriented respondents from the 2010 survey and is much better than the 55% in 2009.
The percentage of respondents looking to pay down debt, invest more in savings, cut up a credit card (or two or three), sock money away for retirement and invest in home improvement have all been trending down over the three year period.

Harris did note that the decrease in houses looking to cut expenses was a positive sign.

Here are the three year trends in a number of fiscal categories:

The 2011 results from the chart above were also provided by age demo. It should not come as a surprise that the Mature group results can almost be tossed – if members of this group have not made a few investments into retirement by now, for example, there isn’t a whole lot of time left to catch up – and indeed, very few cited this as a 2012 priority, and in almost all categories, they were far below the national average.

The middle two groups are more likely to cut spending and eliminate debt, while the younger set is more interested in filling up savings accounts. Here are the full results:

Harris summed up its results, saying, “Americans continue to face difficult economic times and the New Year may not provide a totally clean slate financially, but there are some bright spots when Americans discuss their expectations. Fewer U.S. adults now say that they will cut back their household spending in the year ahead. This is positive news for the millions who rely on the retail, dining and entertainment industries, and may be small sign that Americans are ready to move on from the harsh times of the past several years.”

His data is based on recent news from Netflix that its subscribers streamed more than 2 billion hours of TV shows and movies in Q4.

“Netflix must be eating into traditional TV viewing time,” Greenfield said “Netflix streaming usage is exploding and is far, far bigger than traditional media executives give it credit for. Netflix is actually number 15 with 666 million hours monthly or 2 billion per quarter — our prior analysis estimated number 25.”

Looking at Nielsen data for TV networks, Greenfield highlighted that after the top 15 channels, monthly viewing hours are below 500 million. “With an estimated 667 million hours of viewership per month in October, Netflix would rank as the 15th most-watched ‘network’,” he said. “Netflix had more hours of viewing in October than FX, HGTV and History…pretty amazing, given that Netflix is only in 21 million homes.”

However, Greenfield also said that looking at aggregate TV viewing in the 100 million pay TV homes, Netflix represents only 2.4% of total time spent watching: “While Netflix may be very popular in Netflix homes, it is rather meaningless when put into the context of total television viewing.”

Meanwhile, more than half of the customers surveyed for the report, called “Myths And Truths About Daily Deals,” say they would have made a purchase regardless of having the coupon voucher.

Another big issue is exactly how many people are paying attention to these deal offers, especially over email. “While Groupon vaunts the size of its ‘subscriber base,’ all evidence points to the medium becoming less important,” says Forrester vice president and senior analyst Sucharita Mulpuru, who co-authored the report. “A significant portion of people who once subscribed to these emails no longer do, and many simply don’t want to because they have no need for more clutter in their inboxes.”