Diversifying well
Internet search giant Google disclosed some one-off product-specific figures in its Q3 earnings call late yesterday, so keen was it to show off how much growth it's experiencing from some newer products.
Jonathan Rosenberg, product SVP, was given the green light by CFO Patrick Pichette to talk a bit about display (as opposed to text) advertising, YouTube and mobile.
Google is now coining $2.5 billion in revenue from display ads. This is a big deal because the foundation of Google's business is text ads against search queries, so this shows it's doing a good job of diversifying. "You ask me where the next multi-billion dollar business after search is - it's display," said Rosenberg.
This diversification was further emphasised by the revelation that Google is already trousering a billion dollars a year from mobile advertising. "Clearly this is the future of search on the Internet," said Rosenberg. He also mentioned that YouTube is monetising over two billion views per week, but didn't offer revenue figures. If you're really interested, we've embedded the entire call below.
On the whole, Google raked-in $7.29 billion for the quarter ending 30 September. This was a 23 percent year-on-year increase and traffic acquisition costs amounted to 26 percent of revenues. It yielded a net income of $2.17 billion, all of which was above expectations and resulted in Google's shares jumping by nearly nine percent in pre-market trading.
"Google had an excellent quarter," said Eric Schmidt, Google CEO. "Our core business grew very well, and our newer businesses -particularly display and mobile -continued to show significant momentum. Going forward, we remain committed to aggressive investment in both our people and our products as we pursue an innovation agenda."
We've also included the summary from Google's slide deck below. Google sites (properties) - which means sites owned by Google, like google.com, accounted for two thirds of the revenue total. Google network revenues, which means 3rd party sites using AdSense programmes, accounted for 22 percent of revenues. We're not sure precisely what the remaining 11 percent is comprised of, but Google reported $172 million in interest income alone.
