Amid some lingering accounting confusion tied to the sale of its Motorola Home property, Google announced quarterly and full year revenues for 2012. Fourth quarter consolidated revenues (including Motorola) were $14.42 billion, which was an increase of 36 percent vs. last year and 8 percent over Q3 2012.
For the full year 2012 Google made $50.2 billion vs. $37.9 billion a year ago.
Summary highlights:
- Google revenues (minus Motorola Mobility) were $12.91 billion (89 percent of total revenue). That compares with $10.6 billion a year ago.
- Google owned sites were responsible for $8.64 billion of the $12.9 billion in Q4
- Google’s network generated $3.44 billion
- Other revenue was $829 million
Google’s international revenues were $6.9 billion, which was 54 percent of total revenue in Q4. UK revenue was $1.3 billion, up 24 percent vs. last year.
Paid clicks grew 24 percent in Q4 vs. last year. However average CPCs decreased 6 percent vs. Q4 2011 but grew 2 percent over Q3 of 2012. Traffic acquisition costs were $3.08 billion in Q4 (vs. $2.45 billion during the same period in 2011).
Motorola Mobility revenues were $1.51 billion in Q4, not including revenues from the “discontinued” (sold) Motorola Home business.
Additional comments from the earnings call:
- The top 25 advertisers are spending more than $150 million each with Google
- Google executives repeatedly referred to the multi-screen environment and how they’re optimizing search for all screens
- Skippable ads on YouTube (70 percent) are well-liked by consumers and advertisers because they only pay for full ad views
- Google’s election-related ad revenues increased 5X over 2008
- Mobile revenue growing significantly, no hard numbers provided
- Larry Page: Knowledge Graph is at “1 percent of where we should be” . . . there could be some short term impact on ad revenue.
- Larry Page: We’re still in the early stages of Maps monetization
- Larry Page on Facebook Graph Search: After receive a question about it, he doesn’t speak directly to Facebook but talks about Google’s technology and search innovation (Google Now, Voice Search). “I feel very confident about our core business.”
- Larry Page: mobile CPCs will improve; we’re working to simplify ad system for advertisers “in light of all these [mobile] changes.”
- Nikesh Arora: Vast majority of our advertisers have opted in to mobile. On mobile landing pages: those numbers are not as high as we’d like
- Larry Page expresses frustration about the simplicity of some mobile sites and landing pages, thinks they’re not rich enough often for “modern phones”
- Google Fiber: “not a hobby for us”
Larry Page kept coming back to Google Now and Knowledge Graph as products that really excited him, especially Now.
Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google: Business Issues | Top News
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