Apple Spent Nearly $1 Million on Google Search Advertising in June

[mentalward]

iPhone 4 and new AT&T markets?

Apple spending $1 million on Google ads is hardly surprising especially since it was probably on the iPhone 4 ad blitz. That being said, I've definitely noticed a ton of AT&T ads during my web browsing lately (via Google search results and banner-type ads, too). AT&T just took over Alltel in my area and I wonder if the AT&T spending is related to raising their brand recognition in the areas where their presence is new, like where I live. It would be interesting (OK just a little interesting) to see what they had been spending before June, because you can't infer much from a single month.

 

[Henriok]

this is news because Apple and Google are not on the best of terms and they compete with each other on ad revenue, adwords vs iads.

Yeah sure, Apple and Google is not the best of friends. Apple spends 1 million a month on ads, how much does Google pay Apple for all the searches generated through Safari? How much does Google pay Apple just in hardware and software a month? Now that Google has banned Windows I'm sure that Apple is selling computers, iPads and iPhones like crazy to Google employees..

 

[adztaylor]

That really is chump change to Apple.

 

[kernkraft]

A million a month is chump change.

Apple has $25 billion in cash. They could pay their AdWords budget twenty times over from the interest in a money market account.

For its size, Apple spends very little on advertising.

Well... I don't know. Companies with similar value spend less on advertising, it seems to me.

 

[Somtaaw]

This is truly staggering news, if true.

I can't believe that they'd do something like this!

Am I the only one who caught the sarcasm?

 

[TomaxXamot]

What would be more interesting would be whether the spending increased in July and August due to 'antennae-gate'.

EDIT: More out of curiousity, not really that interesting. And obviously the ad spending in June would have increased seeing as how it saw a major product launch.

 

[twoodcc]

well i'm sure this was b/c of the iPhone 4. and i bet they probably spend around that much normally anyways

 

[StuBeck]

I don't see how this is really news. Wow, a company that is selling a new product in June spent some money advertising it? A guy I used to work with in the UK was regularly spending more than £10k a week on advertising his small 4 person company.

 

[feeze]

Yeah sure, Apple and Google is not the best of friends. Apple spends 1 million a month on ads, how much does Google pay Apple for all the searches generated through Safari? How much does Google pay Apple just in hardware and software a month? Now that Google has banned Windows I'm sure that Apple is selling computers, iPads and iPhones like crazy to Google employees..

Exactly, I think people seem to forget that these are professional companies that act in the best interest of their business. Not in the interests of a competitive feud or a spat between the CEOs.

There is a difference between competitive rivalry and professional business relationships. Even though the two companies may be rivals in certain markets it is still mutually beneficial to maintain a relationship. Not doing so would be cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Apple has a history of maintaining relationships with rivals. IBM PowerPC, Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer, Microsoft Exchange on the iPhone which Apple pays a licensing fee for.

 

[joueboy]

AT&T should fix their network!

AT&T should have used their $4.1billion last year in putting more towers and upgrading it to 3G instead of trying to look good because of advertising. Why waste money on things like this when it's not really solving the problem. We all know the reason that AT&T got their switchers is because of the iPhone not because they convinced people through their ads. Because we all know that if you want a much better coverage around the nation including 3G connection Verizon has it. AT&T should wake-up and fix the problem before iPhone would reach Verizon because this is going to change and that's the truth, and that will never change unless they start fixing the problem and stop wasting money.

 

[E.Lizardo]

Breaking news!
Apple advertises.
In related news,Apple also exchanges products and services for something called money at physical stores and over the internet.And water is wet.

 

[DMann]

All your ads are belong to us

Zero Wing, LOL

Eerily, very pertinent here.

 

[bit density]

Apple advertising.

They still owe me my free Ipad.

 

[JakeTheMac]

Why did google release the information on how much companies pay them, but when it comes to how much Google pays websites and places that hold there ads its confidential and could get your account terminated...

 

[Thex1138]

No Microsoft ?

Microsoft don't advertise on the Google network?

 

[DMann]

Why did google release the information on how much companies pay them, but when it comes to how much Google pays websites and places that hold there ads its confidential and could get your account terminated...

A self-serving plug, perhaps?

Apparently, confidentiality applies only to their clients, in regard to disclosure.

 

[Carlanga]

I wish I could get an extra FAN discount on my monthly bill if I didn't watched or pressed any AT&T ads from here on out...

 

[Dr McKay]

Breaking news!
Apple advertises.
In related news,Apple also exchanges products and services for something called money

Ever tried paying cash? I had the £25 with me in cash to buy a Dock once. Walked up to the counter and the guy on the counter just said something along the lines of.

"How bout No! Ya crazy Dutch Bastard!"

 

[sjo]

AT&T should have used their $4.1billion last year in putting more towers and upgrading it to 3G instead of trying to look good because of advertising. Why waste money on things like this when it's not really solving the problem. We all know the reason that AT&T got their switchers is because of the iPhone not because they convinced people through their ads. Because we all know that if you want a much better coverage around the nation including 3G connection Verizon has it. AT&T should wake-up and fix the problem before iPhone would reach Verizon because this is going to change and that's the truth, and that will never change unless they start fixing the problem and stop wasting money.

What about spending less on subsidies and more on towers? ATT has 3-3,5m iphones activations per month, Apple says ASP of an iphone is about $600, and you can get one from ATT for $199. So that's $400 / iphone in subsidies, ie $1,2B - $1,4B / quarter.

So what about Apple getting a little less greedy and lowering the price so that the subsidies are only $300, that way ATT would have 300-350m more / quarter to build towers. Or ATT raising the Iphone price to $299 and providing better service by spending $350m to build more towers? Or 50/50, Apple getting $50 less greedy on iphone price and ATT charging $249 / device upfront?

You'd get much more tower with that than spending $3m/quarter less on advertising...

 

[koobcamuk]

A million a month is chump change.

Apple has $25 billion in cash. They could pay their AdWords budget twenty times over from the interest in a money market account.

For its size, Apple spends very little on advertising.

If you know how Ad Words works, it makes sense. And it probably is typical of Apple's spending.

Basically Ad Words is keywords for ads. You pay Google to put your ad up whenever a user types in your keywords. The more you pay the more often your ad is displayed and the higher the placement.

Apple would want to always appear if someone was searching using a product name and be at the top of any set of ads. So they would pay large to get that.

I was actually being massively sarcastic.

How this is on the front page of this site, I do not understand.

 

[Master Chief]

I was actually being massively sarcastic.

How this is on the front page of this site, I do not understand.

I agree. Not only is $1 million pocket change for Apple, but without having factual data about their usual advertising budget... it means nothing.

The following info is much more important, and that is that five TV manufacturers, including Samsung, LG, Sony, Scandinavian Lava and Logitech are going to introduce either TV sets or set-top boxes for Google TV starting this year.

But I guess that we have to wait, again, for someone here to wake up and post it. Presumably another copy and paste from Bloomberg. Pretty disappointing for people to see that macrumors.com is becoming say digg.com

 

[The Wedge]

How is this news?

 

[Gasu E.]

It's news because it's information you didn't have before. Does information need to be surprising, shocking, or amusing to qualify as "news"? I'm sorry if you weren't sufficiently entertained by this new information; perhaps if it had been linked to a video of a dancing cat, it might have appealed to you all more.

 

[ChazUK]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.1-update1; en-gb; Dell Streak Build/ERE27) AppleWebKit/530.17 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/530.17)

It's news because it's information you didn't have before. Does information need to be surprising, shocking, or amusing to qualify as "news"? I'm sorry if you weren't sufficiently entertained by this new information; perhaps if it had been linked to a video of a dancing cat, it might have appealed to you all more.

Dancing cat? Where? I need dancing cat!

 

[ranReloaded]

On the other hand, Microsoft will spend over 500 million in marketing to launch its 'iPhone Killer':