
A number of people have been speculating more on the idea of what Google (GOOG) will do to grow over the long haul. Most of that speculation centers around them having to own some type of content in the future if they want to grow.
The major challenge they face is with their AdSense service which accounts for about 35 percent of overall revenue for the company. The problem is it's also nowhere near as lucrative as its Adwords program, which is built on placing ads among search results.
Executives at Google know the type of growth they've experienced isn't sustainable, so they have to start thinking about their long-term strategies. When things begin to slow down for them, their stock will plunge in response to that
slowdown. That probably won't be for some time as online advertising will have solid growth for the next several years.
The bottom line for owning content for any marketer, is in the improved profits it offers; you don't have to split it with anybody.
A number of Google fans think it's going to develop new businesses rather than buy them, but the OpenSocial and Android initiatives have yet to be proven in any way.
One reason I wanted to write about this with Google is we need to be considering ways we can increase our profits as well. Yet, when considering content, we tend to think of the type of content offered by media companies. That's obviously a big part of it, but there are numerous other areas online marketers could think of with content, as far as getting a bigger piece of the advertising pie. Just as one example, think of weather, which is a major search term and of a large interest to consumers.
A good weather site will draw a huge amount of traffic, which people actually will stay around a while to view.
I think when Google says they're not going to be a content company, it's in connection with what we consider news and entertainment, not necessarily no content in general.
Either way, online marketers should think in terms of content in different ways than the obvious news and entertainment part of the equation. Those two will always be important, but there are other types of content that can drive significant traffic as well.







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