Google posts strong q4, struggles to monetize social network inventory

"We have a huge amount of sociable networking stock list," explained Larry Page, Google co-founder. "It varies quite a bit how well we monetize, based on a figure of factors, some of which we understand, some of which we don't."

contempt that bit of discouraging news, Google's results were strong overall. Net income for Q4, the three-month period ended Dec. 31, 2007, rose 12 percentage year over year to $1.21 one million million on a 51 percentage increase in gross. Total gross totaled $4.23 one million million, a gross fig that does not take into business relationship traffic acquisition costs (TAC).

gross from Google's own sites was $3.12 one million million, or 65 percentage of all gross, while gross from spouse sites -- including AOL and Ask.com -- was $1.64 one million million, or 34 percentage. Google's gross from AdSense grew 37 percentage over Q4 2006, according to Reyes, contempt the loss of some publishing house partners, including Viacom, during the one-fourth.

Google is experimenting with various means of improving the public presentation of ads served on sociable networking platforms, including Myspace -- with which it has a long-term relationship -- Google's own Orkut service, and numerous others.

particular plans for improving the monetisation of such sites include enhancing demographic targeting and optimizing the ads' look and feel.

"We're run lots of experiments," Page added. "It's a big chance because it's so much stock list."

Regarding YouTube, CEO Eric Helmut Schmidt said the video site had grown very rapidly in the U.S. And oversea. He hinted at a new round of "very sophisticated" video ad merchandise, and said the company is workings on simplifying its video offerings to please advertisers.

"There's been an issue about standardizing ad formats for advertisers who would like to do [integrated] buys," he said.

Google's revenues from outside the U.S. Made up 48 percent of its total for Q4, and the U.K. Accounted for 14 percent of global revenue.

The earnings report was preceded by an extended decline in the company's stock price, during which per share value fell 26 percent from a peak of 741 in early November to 548 last week.

That decline may be partly owed to fears of a recession's impact on all advertising, and partly to recent ComScore findings that Google lost a hair of market share in December, while Yahoo gained slightly. However, the Mountain View company's conquest of search ad dollars continues unabated. Among clients of SEM firm Efficient Frontier, Google's share of the overall search marketing spend grew to 77 percent .

Schmidt said the company has picked up no hints of a macro-economic slowdown in its advertisers' spending activity.

"I'm happy to say that we have not yet seen any negative impact from the rumors of future recessions," he told investors. "We'll see what happens."

Google's TAC continued to rise during the quarter, including payments made to search and AdSense publisher partners, representing 30 percent of all advertising revenues for the quarter versus 29 percent in Q3.

Strong as they were overall, the results appear to have missed Wall Street expectations for the company, as its share value declined 7 percent in after hours trading.

This report has been updated with new information.