Despite first $50bn year, Google sees ad revenue growth slow during Q4
Google has announced a fourth quarter revenue increase of 36 per cent for the fourth quarter, reaching $14.4 billion, while it also increased advertising revenue by 19 per cent.
The increase of 19 per cent is a slower rate than the 25 per cent mark seen during the same quarter a year previously, although it helped the company reach the $50 billion revenue mark for the first time last year.
Larry Page, co-founder of Google, said: "Revenues were up 36 per cent year-on-year, and eight per cent quarter-on-quarter. And we hit $50 billion in revenues for the first time. Not a bad achievement in just a decade and a half."
The company's overall profit for the quarter was $2.89 billion, and while the average price of the company's cost-per-click price fell by six per cent, the number of advertising click-throughs increased by 24 per cent during the final quarter of 2012. This however was slower growth than the 33 per cent growth rate recorded during Q3.
Page claimed that mobile devices were "driving growth more quickly than anything since the birth of the computer," during a conference call.
He also offered his view on Google's mobile advertising offer as he declared he believed that mobile transactions would increase offline transactions with online adverts.
However there remains a disparity between the falling number of desktop clicks and the increase in mobile, with Google paying Apple for searches made through iPhone devices just one of its issues.
Larry Kim, chief technical officer for Wordstream, commented on Google's mobile plans: “It’s clear that mobile search is top of mind at Google across all of their product offerings. They even hinted at the development of products designed to simplify the Google ad platform for mobile search by trying to make it so that advertisers can advertise their products irrespective of a user’s device and form factor. If so, this would be a huge win for advertisers as it would address one of the biggest pain points in mobile advertising campaign adoption.”
Having bought mobile phone manufacturer Motorola in May 2012 for $12.5 billion, Google saw the company generate revenue of $1.51 billion, 11 per cent of the company's quarterly revenue. This figure was down from $2.5 billion recorded earlier in the year.