SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) - Google makes more money from advertising than all U.S. print publications combined, according to a new study from German statistics company Statista.
The company found Google generated $20.8 billion in ad revenue in the first six months of 2012, while the whole U.S. print media industry -- newspapers and magazines -- made only $19.2 billion.
Statista did note, however, that the comparison is "obviously unfair" and shouldn't be judged scientifically. Google operates globally, while the company only looked at print media in the U.S.
Still, it's a pretty interesting indication of where the print industry is going. The rise of the Web and the fall of print have been well documented, but Statista's chart makes this trend pretty evident. Several years ago, the print sector's ad revenue dwarfed Google's results. But print ad revenue has been falling pretty steadily since about 2006. Google, on the other hand, has seen the opposite effect over the past several years.
However, Google still faces some concerns of its own. The company last month reported somewhat lackluster results in its core business during the third quarter. Among the disappointments was a 15 percent year-over-year drop in advertising cost-per-click, the figure that measures the average amount advertisers paid Google for each time someone clicked on an ad. A 15 percent decline is pretty steep and is worse than analysts were expecting.
