Google Overtakes ITV Revenue: You Heard It Here First
A report by The Times has suggested that Google’s surge in revenues, which we reported recently, means that the search giant has overtaken ITV’s revenues for the first time. Whilst I wouldn’t like to boast, this is exactly what we predicted back in August when we suggested that 2007 would be the year that Google’s revenues beat ITV’s, rather than 2008 which is what most analysts were predicting.
The only question now is whether they can hang onto that lead into next year; The Times suggests that Google’s growth can’t go on indefinitely and whilst we do agree with that, I wouldn’t take any bets on it slowing down in the near future.
UPDATE: As Peter points out in the comments below the figures are for ITV1, not the whole of the ITV family. However I would argue that it is still very momentous and that come the end of the year it’s going to be even closer.
But actually the link at The Register you refer to is concerned only with the channel, ITV1. You are referring to “ITV”, which includes ITV1, ITV2, ITV3, ITV4, ITV.com, friendsreunited.com etc.
There’s no doubt ITV1 is the biggest earner from the portfolio, but Google has not yet surpassed the whole of ITV’s ad revenues for a month as your post suggest.
Peter - it would seem that you’re right and so my post is a bit previous - thanks for pointing it out.
However, even in so much as ITV1 is the single biggest earner from advertising in the UK (or always has been as far as I’m aware) being out-paced by Google is still a pretty big mile-stone, and I do think that Google will beat ITV before the end of the year, or come so close as to not matter.