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Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

Publishers Pierce Google's Armor, Snapping Up Mobile Display Share

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By Daniel Sparks, The Motley Fool

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There are two main types of digital advertisers: ad networks like Google and Apple‘s iAd, and publishers like Pandora , Twitter, and Facebook . Though publishers still lag ad networks on PCs, they’re dominating mobile display ads, according to a report released by IDC on Tuesday. As shipments of Internet-connected mobile devices soar and their capabilities continue to increase, these disruptive publishers seem to have the upper hand.

Disruptive technologies reveal Google’s weakness
Google has definitely seen its share of significant success on mobile; the company captured 54.5% of all mobile ad spending in the U.S. in 2012, according to a study by Pew Research Center. Though Google may boast volume of digital ad revenue, Facebook, Twitter, Pandora, and even The Weather Channel have outpaced Google in mobile adoption of digital display ads by a long shot.

A recent report from IDC provided some perspective.

Facebook, Pandora, Twitter, and The Weather Channel all registered strong sales in 2012 and all (with the exception of Pandora) popped onto the scene from zero sales in 2011. As a result, publishers controlled 52% of U.S. mobile display ad spending in 2012, compared to the 39% they received in 2011.

“Mobile ad networks are losing market share to publishers, and we expect them to lose even more going forward,” explained Karsten Weide, IDC‘s vice president of media & entertainment.

Mobile display advertising itself is the fastest growing sub-segment within mobile advertising, which increased its market share of total mobile display advertising from 31% to 39% from 2011 to 2012. Mobile search ads, at 61%, still hold sway over the market, which obviously works in Google’s favor, but the power has already shifted to publishers in mobile display ads.

Mobile display advertising in 2012

Rank Company Gross Revenue Type
1 Google $243 million Ad network
2 Facebook $234 million Publisher
3 Pandora $229 million Publisher
4 Millennial Media $151 million Ad network
5 Apple $125 million Ad network
6 Twitter $117 million Publisher
7 Jumptap $90 million Publisher

Valuation matters
Valuation, however, brings expectations down to earth. Google should continue to lose significant mobile display advertising market share to Facebook, Pandora, and Twitter, but the overall growth of the mobile advertising market, which grew by 88% in 2012, should still drive significant growth for Google within investors’ expectations for the stock.

Facebook, for instance, trades at a whopping 11.7 times sales, more than twice Google’s price-to-sales ratio of 5. In other words, investors have already priced significant growth into Facebook’s stock. Pandora is the exception here, trading at just 5.3 times sales, despite its blazing 53% year-over-year revenue growth in the company’s most recent quarter.

Pandora’s seemingly conservative valuation, of course, has its reasons. First, the company is only flirting with profitability. Second, the company is still relatively small compared to the other tech companies with a significant sway of the digital music market. Investors are worried that Pandora could face increasing competition from bigger players.

Betting on mobile
While Pandora’s position isn’t secure enough for me to

From: http://www.dailyfinance.com/2013/04/11/publishers-pierce-googles-armor-snapping-up-mobile/

Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

Facebook Proves Its Worth to Advertisers in Race With Google

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By Daniel Sparks, The Motley Fool

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Advertising on Facebook provides a 22% boost to ROI — at least it did for 22 recent campaigns covering a total of 70 million consumers, says Brad Smallwood, head of measurement and insights at Facebook. This news is yet another impressive metric to add to Facebook’s laundry list of success with advertisers in its first 10 months as a public company.

Facebook’s quest for ad dollars
Right out of the IPO gate, analysts had big expectations for Facebook to follow through on its massive membership base with ad revenue. The company undoubtedly delivered — especially in the mobile arena.

Though Google definitely did take the mobile ad crown in 2012 with 54.5% of all mobile ad spending in the U.S., Facebook’s nascent success in mobile is mind-boggling. It was only in June 2012 that the company introduced its first mobile-only ad feature, yet mobile ads accounted for almost 25% of Facebook’s $1.33 billion in fourth-quarter 2012 ad revenues, up from virtually zero earlier in the year. 

Facebook’s progress in mobile is a welcoming sign for the company’s investors. Going forward, success in the mobile market is absolutely essential; eMarketer projects annual mobile ad spending to triple by 2016, from $4 billion today to $12 billion.

Adding even more perspective, eMarketer estimates that 64% of all 2012 ad spending went to the five largest companies in the digital ad market, of which Facebook is the third largest, following Google and then Yahoo! .

Source: eMarketer.

Notably, however, Facebook grew its market share at a faster rate in 2012 than any of the other five companies, growing year-over-year ad spending by 24% compared to Google’s 20% growth.

Competition will intensify
The competition among the five largest companies in the digital ad market — especially Google, Yahoo!, and Facebook — will undoubtedly grow even more heated as the year goes on.

Each of these ad juggernauts is ramping up its efforts in different ways. Yahoo!’s acquisition of Jybe yesterday was yet another sign of the company’s data- and social-driven approach to becoming a better curator of information. The acquisition is the second announced under recently appointed CEO Marissa Mayer. Jybe is a personalized recommendation company that provides recommendations based on a user’s social contacts. The acquisition is in line with the company’s acquisition of Stamped, a mobile startup that specialized in social recommendations, just five months ago.

But the bulk of the battle continues to take place in the mobile market. Google continues to fight for the mobile market through its proliferating Android devices. In the third quarter of 2012, Android tablets made up 41% of tablets shipped, up from 22% of tablets shipped in the fourth quarter of 2011. Google’s dominance is inescapable.

Then there’s Facebook, which CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg declared a mobile company in its fourth-quarter earnings release. Of the company’s 1.06 billion monthly active users, or MAUs, as of Dec. 31, 2012, 680 million of them where mobile MAUs …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance

Computers

Make your business shine online: 8 steps to boost visibility

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It has become harder than ever to stake your claim on the Web. Searches for your small business‘s name don’t always lead to your website. Companies with similar names or splashier domain names—along with random online product listings and completely unrelated results—too often beat your business to the top of Google’s results. If you’re in a commoditized industry, such as plumbing, dry cleaning, or coffee sales, standing out online is increasingly difficult.

Managing your own website and submitting it to Google are good first steps, but they’re no longer enough. Read on to learn how to upgrade your online presence on your own website and on third-party sites, so that people can  find you on the Web when they come looking.

Build up your website

Include plenty of pages and helpful text on your website—with a blog to keep it fresh.

Today, a one-page website is the equivalent of an ad in birdseed type in the Yellow Pages. If you know exactly what you’re looking for, you can find it—but most shoppers will skip right past you.

Fortunately, the first key to standing out involves a tactic that lies completely within your control: building up the size of your website. Though Google‘s algorithms aren’t public, sites with more pages tend to rank higher in search engine results. Google also devotes more links and real estate to pages that have a deeper page structure, embedding secondary links called Google Sitelinks to subsidiary pages on your website. A Google result of this type can consume up to three times as much screen space as a standard search result.

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…read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at PCWorld

Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

2 Tech Buys for March

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By Daniel Sparks, The Motley Fool

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Once the market’s fast-growing darlings, many technology stocks now fully or nearly qualify as blue chip stocks. Even more surprisingly, many of them trade at conservative valuations. Two of these stocks — Google and Baidu — stand out as great buying opportunities for patient investors.

Google
Google’s 15% rise over the last three months, to a current price near $800, may scare plenty of investors away. But haggling over price on this stock could leave you Google-less; there is little reason for Google to trade at a discount given its outstanding prospects. If the company’s growth in online search isn’t enough to convince you that Google’s stock is worth buying, there are several other areas of potential expansion that could prove lucrative as well.

For instance, Google’s aggressive stance on acquisitions, combined with its $48 billion cash hoard, could prove very helpful in creating new business opportunities for the company over the next few years. Last Thursday, Google CFO Patrick Pichette explained that Google plans to keep its $48 billion in cash on hand in order to “pounce” on acquisitions when the opportunities surface. As an example, Pichette cited Google’s $12 billion acquisition of Motorola; the example hints at management’s continued willingness to make large acquisitions.

In contrast, Apple seems to be approaching the law of large numbers when it comes to acquisitions. With a $400 billion market cap and more than $100 billion sitting idle, Apple is running out of growth opportunities meaningful enough to move the dial. As the company’s board of directors continues their “active discussions about returning additional cash to shareholders,” the stock continues to fall.

As Google ponders more potentially aggressive acquisitions, it’s stirring up a new, Apple-like hardware strategy from within. Though its $1,300 price tag is raising eyebrows, the launch of the new Chromebook Pixel is the first evidence of Google’s major shift in strategy in an attempt to profit from hardware sales up front. Though Google has a long way to go to be on par with Apple when it comes to consumer electronics, its attempt is noteworthy, adding upside potential to Google’s stock over the long haul.

Google may carry a seemingly hefty P/E at 24.5. But investors need only to look at the company’s forward P/E ratio to put things in clearer perspective. Trading at just 17.7 times expected future earnings, Google is still a solid choice for buy-and-hold investors looking for a long-term core holding.

Baidu
China’s online search king, Baidu, trades at a significant discount from its price one year ago. In fact, the stock fell more than 15% in February alone, after the company reported plummeting growth rates in average client ad spending during the fourth quarter, and issued guidance for higher research and development spending going forward. Decelerating growth and strengthening competition are now top investor concerns.

But a closer look reveals that the sell-off has created a buying opportunity. The company’s decelerating revenue growth during the …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance