With the New Year now very much in full swing Google’s financial figures for 2011 have been released for all to see, and they makes some interesting reading. The company ended up making $37.9bn last year, turning a profit of $9.7bn in the process. Unsurprisingly, it was Google that came top of the pile in terms of search engines in 2011, despite its share value dropping by 10% after posting “disappointing” fourth quarter revenues of $10.6bn. It does make you wonder what a “satisfactory” quarter would entail profit wise.
Off the back of the release of these numbers, some external research has been done into which industries contributed most to these figures by spending the most on AdWords, and some of the results are rather interesting…..
Unsurprisingly, but in a bit of good news for all those in PPC all the same, 96% of that revenue came from advertising. Rumours that the remaining 4% came from the sale of Chrome bean bags (£162.20 is a small price to pay for the future of comfort) remain unconfirmed.
$37.9bn seems like a lot of money, so which industries have been contributing most to the revenue pot? Here is a rundown of 2011’s top 10 AdWords spenders:
- 1. Finance and Insurance – $4.0bn
- 2. Retailers and General Merchandise – $2.8bn
- 3. Travel and Tourism – $2.4bn
- 4. Jobs and Education – $2.2bn
- 5. Home and Garden – $2.1bn
- 6. Computers and Consumer Electronics – $2.0bn
- 7. Vehicles – $2.0bn
- 8. Internet and Telecom – $1.7bn
- 9. Business and Industrial – $1.6bn
- Occasions and Gifts – $1.2bn
There are also a few other nuggets of interesting information about Google’s year out there. In the Retailers and General Merchandise category, Amazon topped the money list by spending $55.2 million on Google, and perhaps even more significantly, the keyword with one of the highest CPCs in this category ($5.18) was “Zumba Dance DVD”, suggesting that it was also a very good year for Latin dance-based merchandise. As many forecasters expected, “Lego Activity Table” also put in a solid performance in this category, by making Google a tidy $3.02 for every click.
However, this was nothing compared to “Self Employed Health Insurance”, which topped the Keyword league with an average CPC of $43.39.
The data also gives an insight into why college education in America is so expensive, with the University of Phoenix topping the Jobs and Education category by spending a staggering $46.9 million on AdWords. No new swimming pool for them this year then.
As the New Year gets going and areas like mobile and tablet search continue to take things to the next level, we can only expect these already huge figures to grow as Google continues to gallop through the squiffy economic climate like a horse that constantly has its feeding bag replenished with money by keen advertisers. And they wouldn’t be doing themselves any harm if they tried to shift a few extra bean bags too.
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