At first glance, the financial data in Google’s latest quarterly financial summary look positive for the king of online advertising.
“Google had a great quarter with revenue up 22% year on year, at $16.0 billion”, said Patrick Pichette, CFO of Google. “We are moving forward with great product momentum and are excited to continue providing amazing user experiences, with a view to the long term.”
But what about the revenue channel that we, as digital marketers, are most vested in?
The following is the paid search portion of the report.
So, clicks are up 25% year-over-year, and 2% quarter-over-quarter. That’s promising. Even though CPCs are down across the board, those decreases won’t be enough to stunt growth by themselves.
And besides, with 32 percent of online advertising market share, what’s Google really have to worry about anyway?
Well…mobile.
Google does not publically separate their finance data for mobile advertising versus desktop. However, eMarketer’s estimation that Google lost 10% of the mobile ad market share year-over-year, combined with Facebook’s 16% mobile market share from 2013, evinces that Facebook is likely encroaching on territory once firmly in Google’s grasp.
It seems like every day we hear something new about the ubiquity of mobile usage. Whether it was the 105% mobile ad spend increase from 2012 to 2013, Gartner’s prediction that it will increase by $5 raw from 2013 to 2014, or the fact that tablets will account for 66% of eCommerce shopping in the UK this year, there’s evidence aplenty that percentage-based fluctuations for mobile data are more significant than ever.
Which begs the question: moving forward, does the mobile market share slipping away from Google have a greater impact than their overall advertising growth? Why don’t you discuss with us below?
