I think it’s a safe bet to say that Facebook and Google are the 2 most popular names people associate when it comes to the internet. Google itself, along with its recent acquisition of YouTube, has become a household name. It has almost virtually monopoly over the search engine game with the only real competitors being Yahoo! and Microsoft’s Bing. In 2010 alone, Google obtained revenue of over 30 million dollars. Facebook on the other hand hasn’t been around as long as Google, but it is rapidly becoming just as popular. With just over 600 million users worldwide, Facebook has been able to capture more than 2 billion dollars in revenue in just its 6th year of existence. However, although these 2 heavyweights are extremely profitable and create an incredible amount of traffic, is online advertising really the most profitable for U.S. adverting agencies?
After reading an article titled “The Revolution Will Not Be Monetized” by Bob Garfield, I would have to say no. The reason being because although it is a great opportunity to reach millions of customers, the problem with advertising online is that it is simply too large. There is an infinite amount of places an ad could end up along with an endless supply of online content. This in turn would diminish demand along with price. The other issue I have with online advertising is that I personally never click on banner ads or listen to the ads that play before a YouTube video. I feel like a lot of people feel the same way that I do that when we see a pop-up ad or those YouTube ads, we either are annoyed by them or completely ignore whatever message they were trying to pass. It seems to me that the most money for advertisers is probably found either through print publication or television and radio.