Now that Google is probably pulling down more ad revenue than ITV, the biggest TV network in Britain, it looks like it is the the UK’s single largest advertising channel, posits Seamus McCauley (via). The “10k” document Google filed with the SEC at the weekend showed:
- Google £1.28 billion revenue from the UK in 2007 (2006: £814 million; 2005: £446 million) – an increase of nearly 58 percent but slower than the 82 percent growth seen in the previous year.
- Google’s revenue was $16.59 billion and UK revenue was 15 percent of the 2007 total (2006: 15 percent; 2005: 14 percent). With the pound strong that meant international revenue went to $3.321 billion.
- On quarterly basis, the proportion of UK revenue decreased from 16 percent in Q3 to 14 percent in Q4 due to a slowdown in finance and travel.
Publishers who run Google Adsense now make almost as money (£400m in fact) from them as running normal banner advertising (£450m), and the proportion for search is likely to increase.
Hi Mike
Thanks for the link. Just to clarify: Google looks to have made more revenue in 2007 than ITV1 as a channel, not than ITV as a network (ITV PLC will probably come in around £2 billion in total for 2007, still nearly double Google’s revenue); and the £400m I believe publishers made from running search ads in 2007 compares to £450m they made from display in 2006, the previous year. I’m expecting a total closer to £600m for UK display in 2007 when the numbers come in.
Cheers
Not sure how Google’s share of search could increase. How do you improve on 90-95%?
“Publishers who run Google Adsense now make almost as money (£400m in fact) from them as running normal banner advertising (£450m),”
How does that work then? Does Techcrunch make any money from Adsense? Or is this a triumph of lying with stats; you only get included if your site has both Adsense and banner ads AND you responded to a Google survey?
Great work Seamus, (and Mike for pointing this out).
I’ve certainly seen clients increasing spend (AdWords). If the recession bites then who knows what will happen, previous recessions have seen a shift towards direct marketing/PR and away from brand marketing. In today’s world that would mean moving further away from TV towards PPC, well it would if you consider PPC below-the-line, which some do and some don’t.
@Julian – I think there are lots of people who make a little bit out of AdSense and a few who make a living from it and I’m not sure what will happen in the future, 90% of the PPC campaigns I run have ‘content’ switched off, especially since so many have moved to tracking CPA.
If you take a look at the growth from Q3 to Q4 in UK vs US or rest of international, you will see that Google UK has seen what seems to be a really bad slowdown. Not sure this is completely explained by “a seasonal slowdown in finance and travel”.
Any ideas what is driving this? Something odd going on with the advertising economy? It can hardly be shifts in market share!