Joel Pinkham

The other day I read a story on the NZ Herald about the hard times ahead for Google. I doubt this guy really knows what he is talking about, search advertising spend can’t really be looked at the same was as more traditional advertising.

I don’t think that Google will be hit as much as Mr Pauly is making it out to be. They may face trouble with a lack of consumer buying (following through to a lack of searching), but not from marketers cutting their budgets. Here’s why:

1. Search marketing budgets are tiny compared to other media spends by well known brands
2. It’s certainly one of the most measurable – and usually profitable
3. Reducing search marketing budget is going to directly reduce revenue
4. Branding budgets are used to grow a brand – wouldn’t it be most logical to cut back on growth/less measurable expenditure first?

It’s fairly safe to say that a Google budget should be the last one cut.

By the way: NZ Herald, you’re lazy for publishing this article. If you’re not going to write your own content, at least publish articles by industry experts, not opinion columnists.

Tags: economy, google, nz herald

This entry was posted on Friday, April 4th, 2008 at 11:19 am and is filed under Advertising, Search Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.