One of the more interesting quarterly earnings calls to watch carefully is going to be Time Warner’s in two weeks.

Why? Well, in the digital space, it’s because of its long-suffering online unit AOL and what results it will show.

More importantly, though, is what AOL’s performance will mean for the attempts Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes has tirelessly been making to trade it away.

The media giant will announce its third-quarter results Nov. 5 at 10:30 a.m., Eastern time.

Last quarter’s results were not too promising, to say the least, and it was due in large part because AOL dragged Time Warner (TWX) down badly.

There were declines in both revenue and operating income at AOL, which were luckily offset by strength in Time Warner’s cable television and movie studio divisions.

AOL saw its revenue drop to $1.1 billion, a 16 percent dip, with operating income off 36 percent, to $230 million. There were more subscribers lost from its slowly dying dial-up Internet service–incredibly AOL has lost 14 million in the last three years.

And that was planned, after AOL’s home page and email went free. What was not so figured out was how badly its business would be struggling to make a better margins from advertising, even as its access business dwindled.

Time Warner began to separate the two sides of AOL, an effort still in process, in order to sell them both off.

John Malone of Liberty Media (LINTA) said this summer that he would make a swap for the cash-generating access business, and there is also Earthlink (ELNK) and United Online (UNTD) in that mix.

As to the rest of the AOL business–still an advertising and content behemoth, despite its woeful descent over the years in Time Warner’s care–Bewkes has been trying to pawn it off for years now in a variety of deal-chatting with companies like News Corp. (NWS) and Microsoft (MSFT). (News Corp. is the owner of Dow Jones and this Web site.)

And, principally these days, Yahoo, with which Time Warner has been locked in endless discussions about a possible merger for months.

But, while every week the AOL side leaks the breathless news that the union is just about to be struck, that has yet to come to pass.

Still, even this past week, various execs from both companies have been meeting, discussing what the new Yahoo-AOL combo might look like.

The deal, on some level, makes sense, putting together the top graphical ad businesses online and uniting powerful content assets, as well as dominant online communications offerings.

The pair also share a strong relationship with search powerhouse Google (GOOG)–it owns five percent of AOL and does its search, and is trying to launch a controversial search ad outsourcing deal with Yahoo.

But a possible merger of AOL and Yahoo also has a strong stink of desperation about it–of two struggling companies trying to stand together so they won’t fall apart.

Of the pair, despite its weak results last week and endless turmoil over the last year, Yahoo (YHOO) is decidedly the stronger business, with obvious prospects of revival.

But its moribund stock, now hovering in the $12 a share range, has put a damper on talks, given how much Yahoo would have to give up to get AOL.

For its part, Time Warner is foolishly holding onto an $8 to $10 billion price tag from days long gone by. And if results at AOL continue on the trajectory they are on–how could they not, given the weak economic situation?–Bewkes might want to get a little more flexible.

Because things are only going to get worse. So, if a Yahoo-AOL deal is to be struck, sooner or later, for Time Warner, it had better be sooner.

On one of my many trips to Los Angeles (what can I say? I like to hang where LoRo* hangs), I dropped in to see Nick Grouf of Spot Runner.

As many might know, Spot Runner is an online-offline ad agency play that has gotten big funding and even bigger hype of late.

We’ll see how that goes. But Spot Runner actually seems to be tackling an underserved (and unexciting) market of local and national clients in need of cheap online ad solutions married to more traditional marketing venues to boost revenue.

Here’s my video interview with Grouf at Spot Runner’s offices on Wilshire Boulevard:

I met Grouf many years ago when he–along with Spot Runner partner David Waxman–founded PeoplePC and Firefly Networks.

Grouf sold the struggling PeoplePC–which hawked computers bundled with an online service–to Earthlink (ELNK) in 2002 for $10 million and assumption of $35 million in liabilities, in a Web 1.0 meltdown deal that followed a disastrous IPO.

He then started working for the Presidential campaign of Sen. John Kerry, helping figure out how to best and most cheaply place critical television ads–crunching all sorts of data about lots and lots of neighborhoods and towns and cities nationwide to figure it out.

What Grouf figured out, though, was that a system for doing so was nonexistent.

That experience turned into Spot Runner, which is essentially a do-it-yourself model that tries to iron out inefficiencies in the buying and selling of advertising and bridge the gap between the traditional and online ad markets.

Offering cheap ad templates, clients can make and place low-cost television and radio ads for small and national businesses, as well as political campaigns, and get analytics about the impact of the ads. Some ads cost as low as $500.

Spot Runner got a pile of cash to try to do that better, recently nabbing $51 million in funding to add to the $60 million already raised.

Investors include international media giants Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT.L) and Grupo Televisa (TV), investment company Legg Mason Capital Management (LM) and luxury conglomerate Groupe Arnault/LVMH (MC.PA).

Spot Runner’s previous investors are Allen & Company, Battery Ventures, Comerica Bank (CMA), Lachlan Murdoch, Vivi Nevo, Capital Research and Management, CBS (CBS), Index Ventures, Interpublic Group (IPG), Tudor Investment Corporation and WPP.

Its board includes Index’s Danny Rimer and former AOL exec Bob Pittman.

All that money has given Spot Runner an eye-popping valuation upwards of $500 million.

This is its biggest burden, I think, setting expectations very high for what is still a little start-up.

And while there are rumors of both Microsoft and Google, as well as Comcast, being interested in acquiring the company, Grouf dismisses the speculation.

He says Spot Runner is more intent on using the money raised to buy companies and improve its offerings.

For example, it recently bought Weblistic, a local search listings creator, and hired former Microsoft exec Joanne Bradford.

Bradford, who was a VP and chief media officer of MSN Media Network, is executive vice president of National Marketing Services at Spot Runner, focusing on getting national advertisers to also think small and targeted.

Who knows whether the company will be able to overcome its hype, but time (and money) will tell.

(*And a free D6 bag for anyone who correctly identifies who I am referring to here, either by sending in a comment or an email to me at kara@allthingsd.com.)