With the big news about Alphabet and Google still reverberating around the industry, many people who use the company’s advertising services will be wondering what happens next.
Google CEO Larry Page’s vision of “mostly a collection of companies” each with their own area of operations could have a great deal to do with the overall impact that advertising has on revenues.
Profits
Whilst the new Alphabet arm will be responsible for the development of forward-looking aspects of the business, such as the smart home “Nest” division, the future of Google itself apparently lies in the remits it has previously used to build success.
This means that content and writing services will still be important to businesses that have coherent SEO strategies to make the most of what Google has to offer. However, advertisers can also expect to reap the benefits of the changes.
External pressure
SEO lead at Isobar Fred Dintenfass thinks that external pressure from investors has played a role in the reorganisation announcement, which has essentially separated the aspect of the company that makes money from the less profitable ones.
“Looking at revenue, [Google gets] less and less of their money all the time from search engine results pages themselves,” Dintenfass commented.
“In terms of ad revenue, they seem to be diversifying more and more between sites within their network and AdSense, as well as YouTube and DoubleClick, so I wonder if they’re continuing to focus on search, or if they’re going to focus on the products that make more money outside of search results.”
Advantages for advertisers
International branding firm Landor’s chief strategy officer Thomas Ordahl thinks the creation of Alphabet means stronger branding, which will ultimately help advertisers.
“I think as Google stretches, it becomes less clear in the marketplace what it is,” he said. “[This change] simplified what Google is, which should help preserve the brand value for Google, and then they can put all the other stuff under Alphabet.”
With more focus on Google and presumably on its moneymaking advertising operations, the knock-on effects for advertisers can only be positive.
“It just can’t be a passive holding company,” Ordahl commented. “There has to be some rationale for why it exists; that’ll be interesting to see.”
