Google CEO Eric Schmidt gave no indication when, but said display advertising is likely to become one of the company’s next big growth stories.
Google management spends most of its time in business reviews, says Eric Schmidt
“We’re in the process of building an ad exchange” that will “apply the Google magic” to placing display advertising online, he said. The exchange is the byproduct of the company’s 2008 acquisition of DoubleClick, and hopes to solve the difficulties of delivering the right ad to the right Web page.
The future of display advertising lies not with traditional banner ads but with ads that tell stories, using complex content such as video, Schmidt said at the Morgan Stanley Technology Conference.
The future also will bring a point where mobile search revenue exceeds PC-based search revenue, he said. When that occurs depends on the growth of data-enabled mobile devices, and is likely in “a few years, but not a few decades,” Schmidt said.
With the world in the grip of a worsening downturn, “Google management spends most of its time doing business reviews” to decide which of its products has greatest potential, he said.
One product worth mentioning is Google Apps for business. “We’ve been pleased with the willingness of customers to accelerate their trials” of the online service, Schmidt said.
Perhaps that is because it is cheaper, he noted.
