Amazon and Facebook are a Threat to Google in terms of PPC Advertising
When it comes to global internet user traffic, Google holds the top position and the search engine utilizes this huge chunk of web traffic for generating billions of dollars in terms of ad revenue. Currently, Google is the most used search engines on the web and it handles at least 67 percent of global search traffic. Even though Google holds the dominant position, it faced stiff competition from Yahoo and Bing mostly for churning ad profits. Due to the popularity of social media and mobile devices, Google is now facing another intense competition Amazon and Facebook and neither is trying to simply copy Google. Here are the reasons why Amazon and Facebook are worthy rivals to compete the mighty Google.
Amazon is Shoppers’ Favorite Destination
When you want to search online, you go to Google.com but when it comes to online purchase, it is always Amazon.com. It is because consumers can purchase just about anything from Amazon and according to a survey released in May 2014, Amazon has acquired an overall active user base of 244 million. If Google has tons and tons of search behavior data, Amazon has troves of buyer behavior data from millions of its loyal customers who browse and shop on its site. For marketers and advertisers, it is a goldmine of ad targeting data. It is being reported that the online shopping portal is working on its own PPC software and to place ads on-site by the end of this year. Furthermore, Amazon is now testing its delivery service with drones that will fly directly to customers’ doors. If it is successful, then Amazon’s customer base will expand in less time and give the company even more information on shopping and purchase behavior and more ad targeting data.
Amazon Venturing into Other Areas
Not only they have a state-of-the-art online shopping portal, Amazon now has its cloud computing service which is a competitor to Google Drive. The main objective of Google is to view themselves as solving the world’s problems and organizing information around the globe. The search giant wants to be the leader in online advertising and in cloud computing. In fact, the company boasts about running some of the most efficient and fast data centers in the world. But today, they are facing stiff competition in terms of cloud computing technology from Amazon. Once a business enterprise has a customer in its ecosystem, there are more opportunities to sell products and services to that customer. When it comes to Amazon, it was a wide and loyal customer base. Also, Amazon is now very active in offering digital services such as selling digital content (movies and music) and is very popular compared to Google Play Store.
Facebook and Social Networking
Google was too late when Facebook became the reigning champion in the social networking world with over one billion active users. Vic Gundotra who is Google’s VP saw that Google is left behind in social networking industry which is dominated by Facebook. Then in the last year Google CEO Eric Schmidt has admitted that the he made the biggest mistake of not anticipating the rising trend of the social networking phenomenon. But Mark Zuckerberg knew about the growing popularity of social media and the end outcome is that he is now runs the world’s leading social networking platform in an internet world that is instantly becoming dominated by social connections.
According to many industry experts, it was Gundotra who really initiated the effort inside Google in the creation of Google own social platform named Google+. While people use Google+ for its SEO benefits, but in reality, it is not a social network that is catching on with the average internet user. In other words, Google+ is now long way to catch up with Facebook.
Even though Amazon and Facebook outsmarted Google in terms of online purchase, cloud technology and social, Google is now getting more revenue from mobile advertising thanks to its highly popular Android OS based mobile devices. Still Google is facing some real competition in the online advertising business, mainly from Facebook and Amazon.
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