Google Ad Revenue: What Happens When the One Trick Pony Gets Seedy Toe?

May 1, 2020

Seedy toe?

What’s that? If you live in Kentucky, home of the abandoned Derby you know. If not, your child’s pony is going to be in discomfort. And the costs? You don’t want to know what large animal vets in horse country charge, do you?

“CEO Sundar Pichai Spells Out Alphabet’s Positives, but COVID-19 Damage to Ad Revenues Is Only Going to Get Worse” presents a key point articulated by the chief Googler Sundar Pichai:

In March, we experienced a significant and sudden slowdown in ad revenues. The timing of the slowdown correlated to the locations and sectors impacted by the virus and related shutdown orders…Overall, recovery in ad spend will depend on a return to economic activity.

The article also quotes the Google chief financial officer as observing: The second quarter will be “a difficult one.” Google’s CFO did not elaborate on Google cost control measures. Yep, cost control. Important DarkCyber believes.

But back to seedy toe and a lame pony.

The bulk of Google revenues come from online advertising. Amazon is doing a good job of capturing product search and that means that Amazon product ad revenue is likely to track those clicks. That’s bad news for Google as the bad news from the virus disruption affects large swaths of the global economy. Facebook’s ad revenues may have taken a hit in the most recent quarter, but that outstanding, other-directed manager Mark Zuckerberg hungers for more ad revenue as well.

Google may be able to kick sand in the face of dead tree outfits, but the datasphere is a different sort of construct.

Limping ponies will not be invited to parade at birthday parties. Lame ponies can be expensive to make well again.

Here in Kentucky there are only so many places at the Old Friends Farm. Then what? A one way ticket to Fiji? Ponies are a treat of sorts in Oceania. Bula!

Google needs to avoid seedy toe. Amazon and Facebook are not ponies. These outfits are tigers with a hunger for easy prey; for example, a lame pony.

Stephen E Arnold, May 1, 2020

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under Advertising, Financial, Google, News

Comments

Comments are closed.

Search the site
Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive

Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.