With Google’s strong earnings report yesterday also comes the specter of more investment and more potential monetization of Google properties, an increasing number of which fall squarely in telecom/mobile markets.
Here’s a round up of what’s relevant:
- Overall, Google believes its market — which is largely still advertising based — has turned the corner, with an 8 percent increase in advertising revenue for the quarter. Now that market is commodity-, search- and volume-based advertising, so don’t expect your local newspaper to be singing the same hosahnas. But a turnaround is a turnaround and good news for all tech and media markets
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- Google’s over-the-top video play, YouTube, continues inching toward profitability. When it tips over, it seemingly has the potential to move on the same growth path Google’s search properties did. Google said it now serving ads on about 1 billion video views per week (out of about 7 billion videos viewed per week). NewTeeVee does the math: that means it is monetizing roughly 14 percent of its video inventory, showing significant room to grow (though many user-created videos may never, and probably should never, carry ads).
- Google Android also looks ready for a leap forward. There’s just a small handful of Android devices available today, but that’s set to expand significantly in the coming month. Says Google CEO Eric Schmidt: “Android adoption is about to explode.” If mobile advertising revenue is as search heavy as the Web, Google’s mobile bets could pay off as well.
- Finally, with its revenue and profit ships righted, Google looks ready to start spending again on investments and hiring to further drive growth.
It will be interesting to see how telecom and mobile operators see themselves heading out of the recession. AT&T is up next Thursday; Verizon the following week.
