Advertising With Google And SEO Becoming The Only Games In Town
Google just released their fourth quarter and year end finacial results on friday and though their share price took a hit on the day, revenues from Google advertising grew substantially mainly from Adwords despite the average cost per click falling.
- Year on Year adwords clicks grew by 34% and compared to the third quarter they grew by 17%.
- Year on year the average cost per click fell by 8% compared to year end of 2010.
- Adwords,YouTube and Adsense, Google’s main 3 online marketing revenue generators contributed 69% of total revenue for the company.
- Revenue from overseas(ie outside the USA) now accounts for 53% of total company revenue, this figure is likely to be be one of their engines for continued growth in 2012.
The 2011 Further Decline in Traditional Media
Beyond Overseas growth expect average adwords cpc to continue to decline, we believe 2012 will yield a growth in adwords vs organic market share but a reduction in average cpc as more campaigns are managed efficiently. A recent survey of 100 high profile adwords campaigns showed that they were being run at 20-40% optimisation levels, ie there was a comfortable 200-300% improvement available with quality adwords campaign management in place.
Of course averages never tell the real story which is that cpc’s are actually rising in any competitive marketplace, there are a number of reasons for the anomaly that the average has fallen which include a trimming of keywords/phrases that have adwords advertising attached, gradual improvements in adwords campaign optimisation reducing adwords premiums(the premium that badly optimised campaigns will pay over what they would pay per click if their campaign was optimised) and new technological developments by Google in their bid auction systems.
The major takeaway is that all businesses should be focusing on leveraging both the organic listings(SEO) and adwords campaigns in their marketplace as their competitors are stealing a march on them without doing so. The internet is the best commercial friend your business can have as long as you make the right moves.
