I covered my short too early, perhaps way way too early but what the hell, I don't want to be like the longs that are wishing they sold at $475, $450, $400....
<<This weekend's Barron's argues that an equal threat to Google, alongside click fraud, is click truth. Google's best selling point is that advertisers can learn which clicks produce sales, which is potentially its biggest hazard, because advertisers can also learn which clicks don't produce sales, and scale back their advertising budget so that less of it is wasted.
This may Kill Google in the world of advertising, and it will force it to change as much its Internet cohorts are forcing TV, newspapers and magazines to change. Forced change is an opportunity to stumble. And in the world of stock-market speculation, Google selling for multiples of future earnings and cash flow that imply impossible growth is already a disaster waiting to happen.
Advertising budgets are the size they are largely because people don't know how much waste there is in advertising. They over-spend, but they don't know by how much they over-spend. Once people know better how much ad spending is wasted then the ad market will shrink, and so will Google's revenue. >> |
