Adsense was among the standouts for Google’s stellar earnings results that more than met expectations.
While rivals Microsoft and Yahoo were
forced to announce profit fall-offs and buy-back plans this week,
Google pleased investors today describing how its core product
propelled them to high profits.
Google’s revenues soared by 77 percent to $2.46 billion for the
second quarter ending June 30th. Its profit more than doubled to $721
million compared to $342.8 million ($1.19 cents per share), during
the same time last year.
“We’re very happy to have such a strong quarter in a seasonally weak
period for us,” Google CEO Eric Schmidt told investors on a
conference call to announce the results.
AdSense fueled Google’s second quarter growth, CFO George Reyes said,
reporting that the product’s revenue grew 58 percent in the last year
and 7 percent since the first quarter.
“Ongoing initiatives to improve the quality of our ads were a
significant driver of increased monetization,” Reyes said.
Google co-Founder and president Sergey Brin said a key improvement was the decision to display fewer ads next to results for non-commercial searches and more for commercial ones.
Looking forward, Brin said Google Checkout was another improvement
that though only recently announced, had already seen high
early adoption and positive advertiser feedback.
He said Checkout would strengthen the AdSense product by reducing the
amount of abandoned checkout carts for Google advertisers, thus
making Google advertisements more valuable.
In fact, of all of Google’s services introduced over the last year, Google
Checkout was the only one that got any real play in the conference call. Conspicuously absent from the discussion. talk of profits were recently announced products such as Google Sketchup, Google Spreadsheets, and Google Finance.
