June 26th, 2009
While researching my previous blog entry, I found another very interesting piece on the U.K. Guardian’s excellent site, more specifically the OrganGrinderBlog, which focuses on digital media. A May 6th entry, covering the FIPP World Magazine Congress, reports on a presentation by Matt Brittin, Google’s UK director. Apparently Google has shared U.S. $5B with publishers through AdSense, its contextual ads program, in the last year. Is this just in the U.S.? The U.K.? MediaWeek offered more detail — the $5 billion is a worldwide figure. The MediaWeek report also noted that “In addition, Google Search and Google News were said to be responsible for directing one billion clicks a month to publishers’ sites.” Further “Brittin pointed to the ‘massive growth’ in interest in the range of content published by traditional publishers. Since 2005, the number of searches on Google for ‘magazines’ had risen 225%, while searches for ‘glossies and tabloids’ had increased by 458%.”
Surely when you look at the overall increase in the volume of searches on Google in that period, this is small potatoes. Mathew Ingram estimates that the volume of searches on Google increased by 700% from 2005-2008.
The ongoing message for publishers from Google: better to live with us; you’ll have trouble trying to live without us.