But analysts say there are some signs ad buyers are bidding more for mobile ads, and on Thursday Google said advertisers’ cost per click decreased 7% in the second quarter over a year prior, compared with a 9% decline in the first quarter and steeper declines before that. Looking at the industry trends, one notices where it all fits; Google, Twitter, and Facebook have gained maximum revenues from video advertising, whereby companies are willing to shell out extra for a “premium” few seconds of users’ attention.
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The company’s earnings would have been higher nonetheless had it not been for a $859 million loss, which the “Other Bets” segment suffered during the quarter.
Google’s advertising business, its biggest contributor to the revenues, grew 19% in the quarter to $19,143 million (nearly Rs 1.27 lakh crore) from the $16,023 million (nearly Rs 1.07 lakh crore) posted in the same period previous year. Net profit was $4.88 billion, up from $3.93 billion a year earlier.
Google parent company Alphabet beat its Q2 earnings expectations on both the top and bottom line, sending the stock popping more than 5% after-hours.
Brian Wieser, an analyst with Pivotal Research Group, wrote in an investor note this month that Google and Facebook “are unambiguously the hegemonic players in digital advertising”. The company hit a high of 5 per share, after posting earnings of .42 per share on $21.5 billion in revenue, with a 21 percent increase in year-over-year quarterly sales.
‘We continue to invest responsibly in support of our many compelling opportunities’. More than a hundred teams at Google are now using machine learning to improve results – from Streetview to Gmail to voice search. The reason for this happening has been attributed to Google pushing its vast advertising business towards “mobile” platforms, which was a challenge many in the industry thought the company would face.
In recent years, Google has been pouring money into new divisions, new investments, and new acquisitions, ostensibly all of which are created to help the company suss out new ways to make money that aren’t tied to search and advertising.
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Cloud computing is a strategic growth area for Google, which is seeking to turn the infrastructure it built for its mammoth web operations into services that other businesses can rent. While aggregate cost-per-click fell 7 per cent year-on-year, aggregate paid clicks were up 29 per cent.
