Google touts "very strong growth" in display ads

 

Gallery

By Reuters

Posted on 16 Dec 2009 at 08:40

Google has reported "very strong growth" in its display ads business, despite the recent economic downturn.

Speaking to investors and analysts, the search giant outlined its efforts to increase ad revenue from display ads such as graphical images, videos and interactive web animations.

Google's Tom Pickett, director of online sales and operations, claims the company sold out 90% of the ad inventory for the homepage of YouTube in the third quarter.

He claimed that efforts to convince advertisers to spend money on display campaigns were gaining momentum, with Google running display ads from 94 of the top 100 advertisers during the past 12 months.

It also pointed to the success of new Google products, such as a tool that allows advertisers to create their own display ads, which are encouraging smaller advertisers to experiment with display ad campaigns.

However, the company did not provide financial updates for the current quarter.

Google has made a number of recent acquisitions to bolster its display ads business, as it looks to supplement revenue from the text ads that appear alongside search results.

The company bought ad serving company DoubleClick for $3.1 billion in 2008. Last month, Google announced plans to pay $750 million to acquire AdMob, which makes technology to serve ads in mobile apps.

Google does not disclose how much of its revenue, which totaled about $22 billion in 2008, comes from display ads.