Window Shopping

The post-Thanksgiving market is waiting eagerly to see how the e-commerce & advertising revenues pan out this year. By all accounts, Consumer Internet is back with a vengeance.

Today, an online marketing client (a consumer electronics company) mentioned that they are seeing huge jump in Click Rates, but the numbers are not yet converting into Sales. Translation: Online Shoppers are window-shopping, thereby, making the online advertising companies richer.

Om writes a good piece here on how the traffics, eye-balls, and ad dollars are playing out.

Counter argument on valuation by Allen Tsai.

Nonetheless, Google shares dropped. Biggest drop in a while. Jittery market, reacting to bloated stock price. Nothing unusual or surprising.

Google’s vulnerability, at the moment, is its complete reliance on AdWords and AdSense, and no Portal offering. Search Engine Marketing + Content Matching is, presumably, only going to be 30-40% of all online advertising. The rest will go to prime real estate a la Portals, Personalized venues, etc., the equivalent of prime-time television.

I’d like to see a breakdown at the end of this holiday season on how the ad dollars were distributed by application.