Google To Steal Facebook’s Display Ad Lead in 2012–A Year Early

Posted on September 19, 2012 by robhof

From my Forbes.com blog The New Persuaders:

After seeing Facebook vault into the lead in U.S. display-ad revenues last year, Google will take the top spot this year, according to a new forecast from market researcher eMarketer.

The search giant’s display revenues in 2012 will jump almost 39%, to $2.31 billion, while Facebook’s will rise 24% to $1.73 billion and Yahoo’s revenues barely budge to hit $1.39 billion. Overall, display ad revenues will rise almost 22% this year, to about $15 billion, thanks to Google’s and Facebook’s growth, the continuing explosion in ad inventory thanks in part to mobile advertising, and more spending on video ads, especially on YouTube.

But that number is down a bit from eMarketer’s previous forecast because of lower display ad prices on ad networks and continuing wariness by big brands to up their display spend significantly. Google and Facebook combined will account for nearly 30% of display ad revenues this year, rising to 37% in 2014.

What’s more, according to eMarketer, Google will lengthen its lead in the next couple of years in these banner, video, and social ads that are the mainstay of most commercial websites, reaching $4.4 billion in 2014 to Facebook’s $3.2 billion and a moribund Yahoo’s $1.5 billion. Microsoft and AOL also will continue to see relatively flat revenues.

What’s going on here? For one, Google’s display-ad engine has begun to rev, thanks to its YouTube video site, its mobile ads, and its DoubleClick ad-buying and ad exchange business. At the same time, Facebook has seen its growth slow recently, raising questions in the minds of investors about the effectiveness of its social ads and its relative lack of mobile ads. Earlier this year, eMarketer had forecast that Google wouldn’t capture the display lead until next year. …

Read the complete post at The New Persuaders.

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Filed under: advertising, display, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, mobile, search, social, video, Yahoo, YouTube | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

What Are Those Twitter Founders Up To Now? Still Not So Obvious

Posted on September 12, 2012 by robhof
Biz Stone and Evan Williams, co-founders of Tw...

Biz Stone and Evan Williams (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

From my Forbes.com blog The New Persuaders:

With Twitter apparently on a path to profits, or at least revenues, two of its cofounders are now on to other things.  Biz Stone’s and Evan Williams’ new company is Obvious, whose motto on its spare website is “We do various things.” A bit more specifically (but not much), Obvious’ goal is to “build systems that help people work together to make the world a better place.” Its first effort, called Medium, might be viewed as Twitter 2.0, seeking to figure out what to do with the firehose of information Twitter has helped create.

In a “fireside chat” with Hunter Walk, a Google director of product management working at YouTube, at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco today, Stone and Williams fleshed out their vision, admitted they didn’t get everything right at Twitter, and offered advice on how to build Internet companies today:

Q: You don’t still work at Twitter, right?

Williams: I’m on the board, but we don’t work at Twitter.

Q: It’s not an incubator, not an investment fund, and you’re building Medium. So what is Obvious?

Stone: It’s an excuse for me and Ev to work together. Really cool, good stuff comes from an organic atmosphere of working on things. We do whatever it takes to help people and projects philosophically aligned with us succeed.

We have marketing capabilities, design and engineering prowess, and money, and we deploy them wherever it makes sense.

A: Now you are older and wiser and wealthier, and parents. How does that change how you run a company?

Williams: I tried to be a ski bum when I left Twitter, but it didn’t work. We’re driven to do interesting things in the world. We decided to let it evolve as the products evolve, figure it out organically as we go. That’s satisfying. It’s a hell of a lot more fun than skiing every day.

Q: The first product you’ve come out with is Medium.

Williams: We came out with a preview, not a real product yet, a few weeks ago. We have a team of engineers working on it every day.

Medium is essentially a publishing platform, along the lines of what we’ve done before, with Xanga and Blogger. We’ve been obsessed with the democratization of media on the Internet. We just thought there’s still more stuff to do.

Q: Only a select few can publish on Medium. Why?

Williams: We want to help high-quality content succeed and get attention. Not everybody can write. It’s not to limit who can publish. It just happens to be we launched in private beta. It’s hard to throw open the doors in closed beta. It’s definitely not the ethos of Medium to be closed in any way.

Stone: We learned a few things about opening up the doors….

Read the complete post at The New Persuaders.

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Cease Fire! Google Debuts YouTube App For Apple’s iPhone–With Ads

Posted on September 11, 2012 by robhof

From my Forbes.com blog The New Persuaders:

So much for that thermonuclear war.

When Apple removed its YouTube app from its App Store last month, a lot of folks assumed it was one more battleground in an escalating war between it and Google. That seemed like the wrong narrative at the time, and today, it appears there wasn’t much to the supposed skirmish after all. Google has just introduced its own YouTube app for Apple’s iOS devices, specifically the iPhone and the iPod Touch. It’s available in the App Store this morning.

That means that the YouTube app, the previous version of which was created by Apple, no longer will be a default app on the devices, so people will have to manually install it. But given how popular YouTube is, millions of people no doubt will. And the upside is that the app is faster, has features such as an easier guide to channels, and allows you to share videos more easily on Facebook, Google+, and elsewhere.

Most of all, you can now watch tens of thousands more videos, in particular music videos like Taylor Swift’s above. That’s because the new app, unlike the old one, can run ads. The inability to run ads on the old one was a reason many content providers didn’t let them be viewed on the app.

More to the point for Google, this means it can now earn some serious coin from mobile visitors. That’s crucial as mobile devices become the default way people are reaching content on the Web. Google says a quarter of YouTube views, more than a billion a day, are from mobile devices.

There’s no iPad app yet, which seems like a serious shortcoming. Google says it will have one in “coming months,” but obviously sooner would be better, especially with the iPad Mini due out by next month.

Of course, Google and Apple have plenty else to fight about, from patents to mobile operating systems. So don’t expect to see Larry and Tim hugging onstage or anything. But they won’t be fighting over this particular issue anymore.

Filed under: advertising, Apple, apps, display, Google, iPhone, mobile, smartphones, video, YouTube | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Laggards No More, Big Companies Flock To Social Media

Posted on September 8, 2012 by robhof

From my Forbes.com blog The New Persuaders:

Until recently, social media has been largely experimental for most large corporations. No more, according to a new study from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research.

The study of Fortune 500 companies showed that not only Facebook and Twitter but the venerable social medium of blogging all have substantial roles among the largest companies:

* 28% of companies this year had corporate blogs, a big rise from 23% in 2011 and in fact the largest rise in blog usage since 2008. The gap with smaller, “Inc. 500″ firms, 37% of which were using blogs last year, appears to be closing.

* 73% have at least somewhat active Twitter accounts on which tweets appear at least once a month, up 11% from a year ago.

* 66% of companies have a Facebook page, up 8% from last year.

* 62% have YouTube accounts this year, the first time the researchers tracked YouTube usage).

* Only 2% of large companies have Pinterest accounts so far.

Of course, none of these stats reveal how well these companies use social media–and I suspect many of them are still deep in learning mode.

Read the complete post, with a detailed infographic, at The New Persuaders.

Filed under: advertising, Facebook, marketing, social, Twitter, YouTube | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Google Shuts Off TV Ads Business

Posted on August 31, 2012 by robhof

From my Forbes.com blog The New Persuaders:

After five years of trying to sell ads on television using the automated buying system that works so well for its signature search ads, Google has finally given up. In a blog post this afternoon from Shishir Mehrotra, VP of YouTube and video, the ad giant said it will shunt the group’s staff to other projects:

Video is increasingly going digital and users are now watching across numerous devices. So we’ve made the hard decision to close our TV Ads product over the next few months and move the team to other areas at Google. We’ll be doubling down on video solutions for our clients (like YouTube, AdWords for Video, and ad serving tools for web video publishers). We also see opportunities to help users access web content on their TV screens, through products like Google TV.

The shutdown is clearly a disappointment for Google, yet another sign that its math-driven advertising systems don’t readily translate to traditional advertising. Back in 2009, the company shut down radio and print ad efforts for lack of interest.

Mehrotra’s not being entirely disingenuous when he says that Google’s efforts are better spent on online video advertising. After all, more and more TVs get connected to the Internet and more and more people watch TV shows on their laptops, smartphones, and tablets. With its Google TV project and its fast-growing YouTube video service, Google remains in a prime position to vacuum up ad revenues as big advertisers start to follow their audience onto the Web.

Indeed, YouTube especially has shown considerable traction in attracting new ad spending–$3.6 billion this year, by the reckoning of Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney. As I wrote in a recent story, YouTube is where Google is placing its television-scale bets:

Now Mehrotra’s goal is to try to grab a big chunk of the $60 billion U.S. television business. But to do that, and fend off TV-content-oriented online rivals such as Hulu, YouTube has to become a bit more like conventional TV. To that end, it organized itself last year into TV-like channels, investing $100 million in cable-quality launches from Ashton Kutcher, Madonna, the Wall Street Journal, and dozens of others. More and more TV advertisers are being won over, says David Cohen, chief media officer at the media buying agency Universal McCann. “They’re getting marketers to think about YouTube as a viable outlet,” he says. 

Mehrotra, who last year became ­YouTube’s vice president of product, envisions millions of online channels disrupting TV, just as cable’s 400 channels disrupted the four broadcast networks. “We want to be the host of that next generation of channels,” he says.

In other words, Google’s strategy is to attack the TV ad business from where it’s strong instead of from where it’s not.

Filed under: advertising, Google, Google TV, search, TV, video, YouTube | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

YouTube’s Skippable Ads Go Mobile–Will People Watch Them?

Posted on August 24, 2012 by robhof

From my Forbes.com blog The New Persuaders:

As uncertainty builds over whether advertising on mobile devices will work anything like their desktop Web counterparts, YouTube today tossed out its bet that they will. In a blog post, Google’s video service said it’s now launching its most successful ad format, skippable ads called TrueView that it has offered since late 2010, on mobile devices.

YouTube credits these ads with juicing its revenues, which Citi analyst Mark Mahaney reckons could reach $3.6 billion this year, or $2.4 billion after YouTube pays its video content partners. On desktop and laptop computers, some 65% of YouTube ads run inside videos are now skippable, but YouTube says only 10% of people always skip them.

They also command 40% higher viewership than ads people can’t skip, which makes advertisers more willing to pay a higher price, knowing they’re getting watched. As a result, says Shishir Mehrotra, YouTube’s vice president of product, YouTube video now produces more ad revenue per hour than cable TV.

These aren’t YouTube’s first mobile ads. It has offered ”promoted video” ads as well as so-called “roadblock” video ads that appear an entire day on YouTube home and search pages since last November. But these ads clearly hold the potential to become the most popular format on mobile devices.

At first, the ads will be available only on devices using Google’s Android software. Why? Because Apple’s current YouTube app, the one it developed at the time it released the first iPhone in 2007, doesn’t allow ads to be run on it. Apple and Google recently said that app won’t be in the next version of Apple’s iOS mobile software, which will debut on the upcoming new iPhone, expected now around Sept. 21.

Instead, Google is working to get its new YouTube app, which will be able to run ads, approved for the new iOS. When it’s out, no doubt in coming months, we’ll get a much better idea of how YouTube’s skippable ads fare on mobile devices–and a better sense of whether mobile advertising overall will work.

Filed under: advertising, Android, Apple, display, Google, iPhone, mobile, video, YouTube | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

How YouTube Turned Into a Real Business By Making Ads Optional

Posted on August 22, 2012 by robhof

From my story in MIT Technology Review:

In 2008, when Shishir Mehrotra joined YouTube to take charge of advertising, the booming video-sharing service was getting hundreds of millions of views a day. ­YouTube, which had been acquired by Google in 2006, was also spending as much as $700 million on Internet bandwidth, content licensing, and other costs. With revenue of only $200 million, YouTube was widely viewed as Google’s folly.

Mehrotra, an MIT math and computer science alum who had never worked in advertising, thought he had a solution: skippable ads that advertisers would pay for only when people watched them. That would be a radical change from the conventional media model of paying for ad “impressions” regardless of whether the ads are actually viewed, and even from Google’s own pay-per-click model. He reckoned his plan would provide an incentive to create better advertising and increase the value for advertisers of those ads people chose to watch. But the risk was huge: people might not watch the ads at all.

Mehrotra’s gamble paid off. YouTube will gross $3.6 billion this year, estimates Citi analyst Mark Mahaney. The $2.4 billion that YouTube will keep after sharing ad revenue with video content partners is nearly six times the revenue the streaming video service Hulu raked in last year from ads and subscriptions. And that suggests Mehrotra has helped Google solve a problem many fast-growing Web companies continue to struggle with: how to make money off the huge audience that uses its service free.

In 2008, Mehrotra was working for Microsoft and hankered to have his own startup, but he agreed to talk to a Google executive he knew about working there instead. He decided against it—but that evening he kept thinking about how the exec was frustrated that most ad dollars go to TV, even though nobody watches TV ads. Yet at his Super Bowl party two weeks earlier, Mehrotra recalled, guests kept asking him to replay the ads. Was there a way, he wondered, to make TV ads as captivating as Super Bowl ads, every day?

The answer came to him in a flash. …

Read the complete story in MIT Technology Review.

Filed under: advertising, display, Google, Google TV, social, TV, video, YouTube | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Why Google May Be Secretly Happy That Apple’s Dropping Its YouTube App From Next iPhone

Posted on August 7, 2012 by robhof

From my Forbes.com blog The New Persuaders:

OK, so Apple will drop its YouTube app from iOS 6, the new version of its iPhone operating system due out this fall. Cue loud and histrionic coverage about Apple’s thermonuclear war, as the late Apple cofounder Steve Jobs put it, vs. Google and its Android mobile software.

Except it seems likely that script is off the mark. Here’s why: Most people may not realize it, but that YouTube app on their iPhones is actually designed by Apple, a holdover from the iPhone’s introduction in 2007, when all the apps were Apple’s and YouTube was a big draw. (So big that one of Apple’s original iPhone ads highlighted YouTube, as in the video above.) Problem is, since then, Apple has appeared to do relatively little to advance the app, which now looks old (almost as old as that TV used in the app’s icon, at least on my impossibly old iPhone).

Even more important from the point of view of Google and the pro content producers on YouTube, the Apple YouTube app doesn’t allow ads to be run against all those billions of videos views a month that YouTube draws on mobile devices. So search for “Lady Gaga” on your iPhone and what do you see? Well, Lady Gaga, but very little from official channels such as ladygagaofficial, which means very few official videos. Contrast that to a search on “Lady Gaga” on YouTube.com, and official videos are there, along with ads all over the place.

Why the huge difference? Because she can’t run ads on the iPhone YouTube app, and no ads means no money generated. Multiply that by thousands of artists, movies, and all kinds of content that advertisers want to run ads against–ads that will bring in up to $3.6 billion in revenues this year, by Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney’s recent estimate for YouTube. Now you realize why Google may not mind much that the creaky old adless Apple app is heading for the trash can icon.

Read the complete post at The New Persuaders.

Filed under: advertising, Android, Apple, apps, Google, mobile, Steve Jobs, YouTube | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Facebook Social Ads: What’s Working, What’s Not

Posted on August 3, 2012 by robhof

From my Forbes.com blog The New Persuaders:

One of the biggest uncertainties about Facebook is how well its social ads work. The social network and its partners have trotted out study after study showing that people more often click on Sponsored Stories and related ads that contain a friend’s name, but advertisers and especially investors are not yet universally convinced.

Today at TechCrunch’s Crunchup conference in Silicon Valley, we got the skinny from two people who know as much about Facebook advertising as anyone: Greg Badros, Facebook’s vice president of engineering and products and the guy in charge of advertising engineering; and longtime adman Tom Bedecarre, chairman of digital agency AKQA, now a unit of ad giant WPP. Here’s what they had to say in conversation with TechCrunch’s Josh Constine.

The bottom line: Both men indicated that Facebook is just at the start of the opportunity. But the guy with the checkbook really wants more kinds of ads than Facebook currently provides–and implied that the size of those checks in the future depends on getting them. …

Read the rest of the post at The New Persuaders.

Filed under: advertising, display, e-commerce, Facebook, mobile, search, social, TV, video, YouTube | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

No Larry Page, But Google Q2 Profits Beat Forecast on Light Sales

Posted on July 19, 2012 by robhof
Image representing Google as depicted in Crunc...

Image via CrunchBase

From my Forbes.com blog The New Persuaders:

Providing a sign that online advertising continues to shine in a tough economy, Google reported a second-quarter net profit today of $2.79 billion, or $8.42 a share, up 11%, on a 35% jump in sales to $12.21 billion. Non-GAAP profit per share, the one analysts track, came in at $10.12, a little above the Street’s $10.04.

Those revenues included six weeks of its recent acquisition of Motorola Mobility. Google revenues alone were $10.96 billion, up 21%. Either way, revenues after payments to website partners were $8.36 billion, a bit lighter than analysts’ forecast of $8.41 billion.

In trading immediately after the close, shares rose about 5%, then eased back to a steady 3% gain. Google’s shares closed up today about 2%, to $593.06.

Although Street estimates were iffy given the addition of Motorola Mobility to Google’s results for the first time, Citi analyst Mark Mahaney was expecting a $9.99 non-GAAP profit per share on $12.45 billion in gross revenue. Without Motorola, he was expecting $10.76 billion in gross revenues, $8.23 billion in net revenues after payments to website partners. You can listen to the archived analyst call on Google’s YouTube channel.

The upshot after the call: Google executives sounded a confident tone about the business, though insight about Motorola was almost non-existent. In particular, Google appears committed to making mobile advertising pay off, shrugging off concerns about low mobile ad prices.

Google partners don’t seem worried about that either. Jared Belsky, executive VP at digital ad agency 360i, said in an interview that he thinks the rapid rise in mobile computing should be a net positive for Google simply because people are searching more hours of the day now. “This is a strategy for the long term,” says Belsky, who notes that its clients’ mobile ad search spending is now 14% of the total–an increase of 300% from a year ago. “Increasingly they’ll be able to monetize it.” Even more important, he says clicks on mobile ads have risen 300% as well as marketers provide better landing pages and people get more comfortable clicking on the ads as a result.

And the call begins. …

Read the complete post at The New Persuaders.

Filed under: advertising, Android, display, Google, mobile, search, social, video, YouTube | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

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