Posted on 11/02/2006 6:19:34 AM PST by abb
Google is poised to overtake Britain’s main TV channels in the race for advertising revenue, underlining the internet’s challenge to traditional media.
The internet search company’s advertising revenue in the UK is expected this year to surpass Channel 4’s anticipated 2006 take of £800m. Within 18 months, it is forecast to overtake ITV1, Britain’s leading commercial TV channel and the country’s biggest single recipient of advertising revenue, according to Mindshare and Initiative, two top media buying groups.
Carat, another media buyer, believes the milestone could be passed as early as next year.
ITV1 accounted for 90 per cent of the ITV group’s £1.63bn total advertising revenues last year.
Media forecasters called Google’s rise “astonishing”. They stressed that their predictions depended on it maintaining its historic rapid growth in a more competitive UK internet market.
Andy Duncan, chief executive of Channel 4, told the Financial Times on Wednesday that Google – which does not comment or guide on future revenues – would earn about £900m in UK revenues this year, compared with £800m at the C4 group.
In the first nine months of 2006, Google’s UK revenues are estimated to have been £593m, with a strong fourth quarter expected for the group. Google UK doubled its advertising revenues in each of the last two years, making it by some distance the company’s biggest single market outside the US.
On current trends, Google UK would still lag behind the ITV group as a whole, once the broadcaster’s digital channel and interactive services were included. But that analysis does not include future revenue from Google’s recent acquisition of YouTube, the video website.
An ITV spokesman acknowledged the trend in advertising but said the group was growing other revenue through sponsorship and digital services.
Dominic Proctor, chief executive of Mindshare Worldwide, said: “On the current figures, the lines would certainly cross in 2008, but that depends more on Google than it does on ITV.”
Mr Proctor, whose group buys media space for Ford and Unilever, added: “We think that Google’s growth is going to be massive in the next two-three years, but there is a limit and it will tail off.”
Mr Duncan described the changes in advertising spend as a “structural change”. “People need to wake up and realise that this is not just a cyclical issue.”
Google’s rapid rise contrasts markedly with the struggles of ITV1, which is expected to decline in revenues by 12 per cent this year because of a fall in audience numbers that has encouraged businesses to spend less on advertising on the channel.
A Google spokesman said the company’s growth was not a “zero sum game” which had to come at the expense of television.
Ping
Jim Cramer (the "Mad Money" stock-picker on CNBC) said that if Google
got their advertizing model working...it would just about be the end
for major metro newspapers.
This was maybe 6 months ago (or longer)
putting $$$$$ in algore's pocket...
"putting $$$$$ in algore's pocket..."
True enough...
but not for Republicans/conservatives who were listening to Cramer's analysis
and acted on it.
They had a chance to grab some of that $$$ and give it to their favorite candidates.
And this Google assault on advertizing is going to happen anyway, so it
good to parasitize a few bucks off the event.
While lurking at DU yesterday so as to fully enjoy the Kerry debacle, I noticed that NBC is a major advertiser on that forum. How even-handed of them.
Networks now are entering the dark days. Feel the fear.
An interesting thing happens to network programmers from May to September. That's the period when they announce their new shows and schedules in New York (May) and roll them out to viewers at home (September). They live the dream -- not unlike the dream lived by professional sports coaches in the off-season.
This could be it. This could be our year. We could win this thing.
Unfortunately, by the end of September it's gone to hell, mostly. The September swoon then meshes with the October doom and pretty soon nobody is sleeping at night and it's all Xanax and sad cocktails.
That's when it gets really interesting. Like right now. Let the tinkering begin.
Remember, television is a fear-based industry. It's a deadly numbers game. Each hour of each night in prime time tells a story of death or glory. Five networks, with shows in each slot, competing directly with one another (and indirectly with cable and the Internet).
(Excerpt)
Nice. Thanks for the ping, abb. It would help if the media had some integrity, but apparently that's impossible. Ah well.
If journalism had integrity, its codes of ethics would be unnecessary instead of merely a description of the tendentiousness which journalism will in fact perpetrate (just as the proscriptions of the Geneva Conventions do not constrain al Qaeda but rather predict precisely what al Qaeda will do).Journalism consists of a multiplicity of individual organs such as ABC, The New York Times, CBS, Fox, and so forth - in precisely the same way that The New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox, etc, are all individual baseball teams. Yet Big Journalism can properly be spoken of as a single entity, just as Major League Baseball can be spoken of as an entity. The various MLB teams compete only within the white lines and are otherwise all in it together to promote the sale of baseball tickets and of advertising in radio and TV coverage of baseball games. Just so, NBC and CBS compete for news audience but do not compete on objectivity among themselves but only with FNC, talk radio and the internet.
Integrity would have required all journalism organs - CBS not excepted - to condemn the "Killian memo" propaganda; instead all stuck together to minimize the damage to the public perception of the "objectivity" of journalism.
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