CPC down for Google

The average cost-per-click for Google’s ads, both on the search giant’s own sites and those of its network members, have declined by 8 per cent year-on-year, the company revealed in its Q3 results.

CPC was also down 4 per cent compared to the prior quarter.

However, paid clicks for the quarter increased 26 per cent over Q3 2012. Traffic acquisition costs – the revenue shared with partners – grew to $2.97 billion, up from $2.77 billion in the same quarter last year; an increase of two percentage points compared to Q3 2012.

The company reported revenue of US$14.89 for the quarter, up 12 per cent compared to the same period last year. (Google’s revenue reporting does not take into account traffic acquisition costs of US$2.97.)

Larry Page: Multi-screen ‘at a scale few imagined’

In earnings remarks, which he also posted to Google Plus, Google CEO Larry Page said that the multi-screen world has arrived “at a scale few imagined”.

“People increasingly have more than one device. And screens are proliferating -- in the home as well as wearable screens like watches and Google Glass.”

“When Android was still a skunkworks project, I used to feel kind of guilty visiting the team,” the CEO said. “We were a search company and building a new operating system wasn’t an obvious move to most people. Turns out that was a lot of misplaced guilt! Over 1 billion Android devices have now been activated worldwide – and 1.5M devices are lit up every day.”

Page said he was also “tremendously excited” about Chromebooks – the lightweight notebooks that run Google’s Chrome OS and are focussed on providing access to the company’s cloud-based services.

“As screens multiply, the ability to navigate across them seamlessly becomes more and more important,” Page said.