By Jack Nicas
This article is being republished as part of our daily
reproduction of WSJ.com articles that also appeared in the U.S.
print edition of The Wall Street Journal (July 25, 2017).
Google parent Alphabet Inc. said its advertising business
continued to hum, but its fastest-growing segments -- mobile and
YouTube advertising -- are less lucrative than desktop ads.
Alphabet said clicks on its ads surged 52% in the second quarter
from a year earlier. But ads on smartphones and with YouTube videos
generally earn less money per ad than search ads on traditional
computers, the highly targeted ads that appear atop search results.
As a result, Google said its revenue per click fell 23% in the
quarter, the widest spread between the two metrics in at least six
years.
The growth in the number of clicks helped boost second-quarter
revenue 21% to $26.01 billion over a year prior.
"The results are reflecting two basic trends: an ongoing shift
to mobile and an increasing amount of their revenue coming from
YouTube," said Mark Mahaney, internet analyst at RBC Capital
Markets. "The growth remains very impressive for a company this
size."
That shift in its business has also pressured margins.
Alphabet's operating margin was 26.4% in the quarter, compared with
27.8% a year ago, marking the first drop in eight quarters, said
Brian Wieser, analyst at Pivotal Research Group.
The shift to smartphones is increasing the fees Google pays to
smartphone partners, such as Apple Inc., to be the default search
engine on smartphones. Google's payments to partners, including
phone makers and websites on which it places ads, increased 28% to
$5.09 billion in the quarter from a year earlier. YouTube's growth
also drives up costs because Google must pay to license some videos
on the site.
Such payments to partners will likely continue to increase given
the shift to mobile, "but our focus remains on growing profit
dollars," Alphabet Chief Financial Officer Ruth Porat said on a
call with analysts. "We're just really pleased with the strength of
our mobile business."
Alphabet's net profit fell by 28% to $3.52 billion because of a
$2.74 billion fine from European regulators. EU regulators last
month fined Google after their seven-year investigation concluded
Google favors its shopping ads in its search results at the expense
of competitors. Google denies the charges and said it is
considering an appeal.
Alphabet shares, up 26% this year, fell 3% in after-hours
trading.
Google, the world's biggest advertising company, dominates the
digital-ad landscape with fellow tech giant Facebook Inc. The two
firms captured about 77% of the $12 billion increase in spending on
online ads in the U.S. last year, according to eMarketer. Given
Google's size, if it continues to earn less per ad click, it could
depress online-ad prices across the internet.
As more people connect to the web on smartphones, they are using
the internet more often and thus clicking on more ads Google sells
on internet search results, websites and videos. Ads also take up a
larger portion of smartphone screens, making it more likely that
users will click.
On YouTube, Google often shows ads at the beginning of videos
that companies buy using an automated auction system. That system
of programmatic advertising caused a problem for Google earlier
this year when a series of news stories in late March showed Google
was running some brands' ads alongside videos with content that
could be considered racist or hateful. That caused some major
advertisers to pull their spending on YouTube ads.
As of last month, many major companies, including Wal-Mart
Stores Inc., AT&T Inc., and J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., still
hadn't resumed spending on YouTube ads. Others, including General
Motors Co., Coca-Cola Co. and Lyft Inc., had returned to the site
after Google improved technology to screen videos, among other
moves.
There was little sign of an impact from those spending cuts in
the second quarter sales growth.
However, marketers have pressured Google to offer more
guarantees that their ads only appear with acceptable content,
likely squeezing margins, Mr. Wieser said. Google is likely showing
more ads on reputable websites as a result, which charge more to
host Google's ads than lesser-known sites, he said.
YouTube ads, specifically, are much cheaper for advertisers,
said Mark Ballard, vice president of research at Merkle Inc., a
digital-marketing firm. Merkle estimates that for just Google
search ads, clicks increased about 23% in the quarter and revenue
per click was up roughly 1%. "The shift to mobile is depressing
[revenue-per-click] growth for Google, even in search, but by far
the biggest factor of that decline is YouTube, " Mr. Ballard
said.
Google is pursuing growth outside of advertising, giving rise to
a second major business beyond advertising: the cloud, in which
Google stores other companies' data and runs their systems on its
global network of computers.
Google has said it believes the business can one day eclipse its
ad sales, which accounted for 88% of its $90.27 billion in revenue
last year.
The segment that includes Google's cloud sales, dubbed "other
revenue," grew by 42% in the quarter to $3.09 billion.
Write to Jack Nicas at jack.nicas@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
July 25, 2017 02:47 ET (06:47 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2017 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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