Yahoo's third quarter year-over-year numbers fell a whopping 38%, the company announced after the bell today. Yahoo earned $158.5mn, or 11 cents per share, compared with $253.8 million, or 17 cents per share, in the same period last year.

But an announcement that Sunnyvale is ready to ship a long-delayed upgrade to its advertising network sent Yahoo shares climbing again. Terry Semel said Yahoo would begin selling ads on the new system in early 2007. Still the overall attitude is sour on Yahoo's ability to compete with Google.

"I am not satisfied with our current financial performance, and we intend to improve it," Semel told analysts during a conference call Tuesday with analysts. "We are not exploiting our considerable strengths as well as we should be."

And the make-or-break holiday fourth quarter? Not much better.

AP: Yahoo forecast its fourth-quarter revenue will range from $1.15 billion to $1.27 billion. The average analyst estimate had been $1.30 billion, according to Thomson Financial.

Wall Street is worried that Yahoo is increasingly unable to compete with Google in online advertising, and Google's acquisition of superpopular YouTube leaves Yahoo on the losing end of the next big moneymaker - selling ads into video content.

Thus Yahoo announced today two advertising-based acquisitions - the outright purchase of Adinterax, "a provider of rich media advertising solutions," according to the press release and a 20% stake in Right Media (press release), which runs an online marketplace for Yahoo advertising.