There's Lot of Ad Pie for the Rest of Us
More evidence of the Google Juggernaut comes from an eMarketer report that the search behemoth will account for 25%, or $4-billion, of the U.S. online ad market this year. That's truly impressive and explains why Google sports a market capitalization of $128-billion. Another way to look at the eMarketer report is there will be $12-billion of non-Google ad revenue this year for the rest of us. In the scheme of things that's a lot of money, and that total will climb as companies allocate more of their ad budgets to the Web. The key question is where this money will be spent. Google will clearly get more than its fair share, while portals such as Yahoo, AOL and MSN will thrive as well. While I'm now clearly biased after joining b5media but you have to believe blogging/new media content networks will also emerge as viable advertising vehicles. The market received a nice vote of confidence earlier this week amid reports Sequoia Capital (those VCs who invested in YouTube) is putting $5-million in Sugar Publishing, which operates four blogs. This comes on the heels of b5 raising $2-million from J.L. Albright and Brightspark. Bottom line: if you believe in the theory a rising tide lifts all ships, Google's success is a positive development if puts the spotlight on the online ad market and encourage more companies to spend more.
