Wow! That's a lot of display-ad sales. Google is expected to generate $1 billion in sales this year from display advertising. Although that's only a meagre 4% or so of the total Google sales expected in 2010, it's still a pretty stellar performance given the overall state of the online advertising market and the difficulties many are facing in selling such advertising space.
According to an article in Bloomberg Business Week part of the Google success can be laid firmly at the door of acquisitions back in 2005 and 2007. First Google purchased YouTube for $1.65 billion followed by DoubleClick for $3.1 million. Sure, display-ad revenue is never likely to rival search related ads but the demand for marketing messages in video clips and web banners is certainly on the rise. Actually scrap that, demand for marketing messages in video clips is certainly on the rise and expected by some analysts to account for around $700 million of that predicted $1 billion revenue.
Which begs the question, where is your online advertising budget being directed this year? Search ads, banner ads or video related display ads?