Ad spike may reflect change in Google’s tune...
Times are tight. Heck, college professors are having to sell ad space on exam pages to make up for budget cuts. It would make sense that Google would increase the number of ads on its search pages, too, except it's hard to forget certain executive speeches about fewer ads with better targeting.
So, reports that Google has upped the number of ads on search result pages by 75 percent might be a little jarring at first. Nicholas Carlson at Silicon Valley Insider thinks so, and thinks it has to do with Google "trying to dig up revenues anyway it can" in Q4. Meeting or beating expectations is vital to Google's stock price, and part of that, in addition to cost-cutting, is more ads in more places.
At a glance, it appears the spike in ads correlates with the holiday season; it also correlates with the economic downturn, which just happens to come at the worst time of the year. Yes, Q4 of 2007 also showed a peak in the number of ads per page. But, if AdGooroo's numbers are correct, the number of ads popping up this year reflects a nearly 55 percent spike over last year.
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