Archives for May 2007
Do People Really Click Those Google Ads?
By Josh Barsch
It’s a crazy world, this one we live in, isn’t it? “Why yes it is, Josh,” you say, “but what makes you say so on this very day?” You’re in luck, because I feel like elaborating.
You’d have to be living in a cave if you hadn’t heard about Google’s astronomical rise to the top of the business world over the last few years. The company’s stock price hovers between 1 and 2 zillion dollars per share, giving it a market cap of (roughly speaking) several hundred jillion dollars. To put that in layman’s terms, Google is worth more than Germany, New York City, Saturn, Brad Pitt, Lindsay Lohan and the Church of Scientology combined. But enough with the hard-and-fast numbers. My point is: Google is phenomenally successful. They are doing something very, very right.
Even more remarkable than Google’s success is the fact that all of that money comes from essentially one source: those little blue (or sometimes white, and recently even yellow) ads that appear every time you do a search. The ones that say “sponsored links”. That’s right: Google is a one-trick pony. All of those jillions come from people around the globe doing Google searches, seeing one of …
Josh Barsch founded StraightForward Media in 2001 after a brief career in print journalism. He now lives in the sticks of western South Dakota with his wife Christina, daughter Mia, son Ezra, two dogs Velvet & Holly, and cat Chanceux, all of whom he loves dearly. And four nameless hermit crabs, for whom he feels nothing.