Analyst: Google Has A Plan For The Next 'Couple Hundred Billion' In Revenue
This year Google introduced "Brand Lift in Adwords," a product that polls consumers to see if they actually remembered the ads they saw; and "Active GRP," a measurement that allows Google advertisers to compare their results directly to TV campaigns on a gross ratings point basis (that's the standard measure of reach for TV audiences).
Both products challenge advertisers to examine the billions they throw at TV or other traditional media and compare it to the results they see online. Google has gotten so big — it booked $50 billion in annual revenue in 2012 — that it needs to find new markets in the billions of dollars to continue moving the sales needle. Small markets just won't do. TV, of course, is the biggest single sanctuary for advertiser dollars. Hence the measurement push.
At TechCrunch's Disrupt conference this week, Neal Mohan, Google's vp/display advertising products, described how big he thought the big data for advertisers market might eventually become: “a couple hundred billion dollars.”
According to Morgan Stanley's note:
Neal Mohan echoed comments that Nikesh Arora, Google’s Chief Business Officer, made in February – that online brand advertising (display and video) is in the first inning of a large online shift, and that Google is well-positioned to capture a meaningful share of those budgets. Mohan believes that “a couple hundred billion dollars” are likely to move online as Google and others provide brand advertisers with tools to measure the metrics they care about. While last-click attribution remains extremely important to many advertisers, Google believes that in the near future, about one-third of digital campaigns will be measured on metrics other than clicks – so Google is building active measurement systems to track ad engagement, as Google believes it to be a good predictor of sales.
Disclosure: The author owns Google stock.