odin

The Google Economy

Trying to understand the gist of this piece. Does economic environment no longer matter? Is it uncorrelated to ad revenues? I seem to remember hearing about how traditional metrics were irrelevant (eyeballs not revenues, they said) at another point long time ago.

Ultimately, demand for ads stems from the fact that people want to BUY things. The ultimate ROI for an ad is an actual sale. While new media is better at targetting ads to relevant audiences, its ads are infinitely less memorable than a glossy travel mag ad. Those ads sometimes _generate_ demand where previously there was none. Not to say old way is superior, but blindly worshipping new media and GOOG in particular doesnt seem wise.

The only point I'll make is that until there is some clarity about how much a click on GOOG leads to an actual sale and hence brings about permanent changes in marketing theories, I am not sure about the stickiness of these revenues and the growth forecasts on which GOOGs valuation is based.

Disappointed that there hasnt been much focus on the non-US contribution to GOOG's revenues.