Prediction: Facebook Will Surpass Google In Advertising Revenues | Hacker News Reader

Prediction: Facebook Will Surpass Google In Advertising Revenues

techcrunch.com

25 pointsprofitbaron12 comments

I see no G vs. FB charts or actual data about Google's revenue. This just sounds like complete hyperbole.

Google display advert revenue this year (aka YouTube, Doubleclick, etc.) will hit around $2.75 billion while Facebook will likely hit $3.5 billion.

Google's search ad business is safe, but Google's content network could face a major challenge if Facebook launches a competitor. As most people leave Facebook logged in, Facebook could do much more accurate ad targeting as well as avoiding the huge fraud problems that Google faces.

They target pretty different components of the advertising industry. For example, I kind of doubt Coca-Cola spends a lot of money on Google ads (nobody uses Google to find a Coke). On the other hand, Facebook could be a great tool for promoting the Coke brand. It's much more analogous to traditional TV advertising.

Article missed the important proviso "in display advertising" (Facebook are likely to overtake Google in this space this year), but they're nowhere near Google in terms of CTR or revenue for search ads.

Their ad models seem totally different to me.

I'll advertise on facebook if I want a specific type of customer just to know I exist.

On google, I go after the customer actively looking buy something I provide.

It seems like that Google still has they high paying ad market while facebook has a chunk of the low paying ad market.

That may be a problem. That was what happened to US auto industry before it got pwned by asians.

A problem for who? How does this parallel the auto industry situation at all?

Google had topline revenues of $8.58 last quarter. Ahem. Facebook is thinking of making $4 Billion in revenues this year. So Facebook would have to make roughly 10X in revenues.

Anyone can say anything on Techcrunch. This article has no facts.

Oh.. I tried to predict that almost an year back :P http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1474763

People log into Facebook to see their friends' drunken photos from last night.

People browse to Google to find information - which lends itself naturally to ads about products and services.

Right, but then people stay logged into Facebook throughout the day while navigating the rest of the web (and spend an increasingly greater amount of time on Facebook itself).

I have no idea if Facebook ad revenue will surpass Google's (and neither does this article), but the way Facebook ads work seems much more in line with traditional advertising (Google seems like an exception, but a good and potentially paradigm-changing exception).

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