Google Advertising Beats TV

It was announced this week that revenues from Google are now higher than Channel 4 in the UK.

This shows just how far and quickly advertising on the internet has come from the heady boom and bust era from the late 1990s/ early 2000s. It also shows the emphasis that advertisers place on the internet as an advertising medium. In fact, just some weeks ago, studies showed that people spend more time online than watching television (or do both at once)

Google’s advertising revenues in the UK would surpass channel 4’s revenues of £800m this year and within 18 months surpass ITV1’s revenues. This is according to two media buyer companies, Mindshare and Initiative.

The ITV group has revenues of £1.63bn with the ITV1 station making up 90% of that.

Google has doubled its advertising revenues for each of the last 2 years making it easily the biggest source of revenue by some margin outside of its US base. These predictions come before Google’s recent acquisition of youtube and we predict that once this has been factored in and with the continued takeup of broadband in the UK that Google will easily surpass the ITV group revenue before the end of 2007.

ITV on the other hand are predicted to reduce revenues by approximately 12% this year because of a fall in audience numbers which leads to lower advertising costs for advertisers.

ITV are attempting to grow their revenues from other streams such as digital and sponsorship - but maybe they also need to think outside the box, because certainly in the short and medium term, the internet is here to stay as well as the current advertising model.