An interesting article in the New York Times Today (free if you register):
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/30/business/yourmoney/30google.html?pagewanted=1&th&emc=th

Here are a few highlights that I found interesting if you don’t want to take the time to read through the whole thing:
*Google ranks 4th in total advertising revenue among all media companies. Ahead of NBC!
*Users click 50% to 100% more on ads appearing on Google than on Yahoo!
*Google is looking to develop picture based advertising
*Google has 2-3 times the number of advertisers as Yahoo!
*Yahoo will let advertisers display information based on the demographic information you give them when you sign up for their accounts … MSN will do the same
*Google is working on attempts to link large retailers inventory systems to their advertising so they they can get rid of extra inventory.
*”GOOGLE introduced its current system for determining which ad to show on which page late last year. It is a wonder of technology that rivals its search engine in complexity. For every page that Google shows, more than 100 computers evaluate more than a million variables to choose the advertisements in its database to display – and they do it in milliseconds. The computers look at the amount bid and the budget of the advertiser, but they also consider the user – such as his or her location, which they try to infer by analyzing the user’s Internet connections – as well as the time of day and myriad other factors Google has tracked and analyzed from its experience with advertisements.”

Here are my comments on the article:
I would like to know when Google is going to start using iPods and the like in their advertising strategy. This seems like the perfect way to sell advertising to a very specific demographic. Instead of paying .99 per song on iTunes, they go to Googletunes and then have to listen to an advertisement every 10th song etc. It isn’t that different from radio, free songs…but you have to listen to some advertising. Advertisers could bid of advertising for specific songs that they think people who would want to buy their product/service would be listening to on their player. Books on tape could also be included. If I go to Googletunes and download the book Marketing for Dummies, then I get advertisements at the end of every chapter that tell me where to get the marketing resources that I just read about locally for my business.