Google shares touch record highs on back of £1.84bn quarterly profit
Google has seen its share price soar to record highs after it exceeded analysts’ expectations by posting a profit of £1.84bn for July-September.
Shares jumped 6 per cent to hit $941.25 on the back of the news, fuelled by a 28 per cent increase in paid clicks from a year ago.
The sterling results came on the back of missed forecasts in the previous quarter however and masked a decline in the important cost per click rate Google charges advertisers of 8 per cent on the previous year.
Jon Myers, VP & MD EMEA at Marin Software said: “As predicted, Google's earnings show positive growth over the last quarter. This is of particular interest as they are the first results since Google introduced Enhanced Campaigns on 22nd July. This move aimed to boost visibility of search ads across multiple devices in response to the rise of mobile and tablet. These figures also reflect the booming digital marketing industry as a whole, which showed a growth of 17.5% (IAB) in the first half of 2013 in the UK, with mobile now accounting for 14.1% of total spend.
“For marketers, Enhanced Campaigns has begun to level the playing field between different channels with CPCs on tablet and desktop appearing to equalise. For those marketers who effectively migrated their campaigns in July, this could have resulted in more clicks and higher visibility on mobile devices. However, it’s still early days so it’s important to continually monitor campaigns for performance and to make adjustments to maximise ROI.”
Mobile has become an increasingly dominant revenue source for Google with 40 per cent of YouTube users accessing the site via their phones, versus just 6 per cent two years earlier.