Ad Industry Roundup: Google; Burger King-Facebook; OPA
This story was written by David Kaplan.
Google had 1M advertisers in '07: So while that secret is out, you can only guess how many more advertisers Google (NSDQ: GOOG) has now. UBS analyst Ben Schachter speculates the search giant has between 1.3 million and 1.5 million advertisers at this point. Citing an SEC regulatory filing, NYT reported that Google said it had 1 million advertisers as of 2007. The numbers have grown steadily: from 89,000 in 2003, to 201,000 in 2004, 360,000 in 2005 and 600,000 in 2006. But what hasn't changed is is how much advertisers on Google have spent on average, which is just above $16,000 a year on Google, roughly the same as five years ago.
Will delete Facebook friends for (fast) food: If you've got too many Facebook friendspeople you've probably never even spoken tobut haven't had cause to delete them, Burger King has an impetus to clean out your list. Much in the same odd vein as its four-year-old Subservient Chicken web spot, Burger King will offer Facebook members a coupon for a free burger if they delete 10 friends. Only one coupon per user account, though.
Despite the down economy, ad effectiveness is up: That's the Online Publishers Association's interpretation of a Dynamic Logic MarketNorms report (PDF). For example, since the first report in July, brand awareness on OPA member sites rose 38 percent, while scores on ad networks have declined 19 percent. Also, brand favorability scores for OPA member sites have risen 27 percent, while ad networks, portals and MarketNorms have dropped 29 percent, 17 percent and 6 percent respectively.
By David Kaplan