Google Not "Immune" to Mortgage Crisis
From Silicon Alley Insider: We worrywarts are getting some company. Barron's Mark Veverka rounds up a few opinions on Google's exposure to the mortgage crisis, one of whom offers the sound supply/demand logic that the "Google is immune" crowd usually breezes right past:
[The argument that Google is a crucial source of mortgage leads] doesn't explain how Google has managed to protect a big piece of a smaller pie, says a money manager at a major East Coast hedge fund. "It is inconceivable that mortgage-related advertising revenue isn't shrinking," the manager says.
It's hard to argue with his logic. The number of advertisers is diminishing as mortgage originators, brokers and affiliated businesses fold their tents. Hundreds of small operators that used the Internet as a way to play the housing boom have gone away. Numerous big financial institutions are getting out of the business or are scaling back their home-mortgage operations. For loyal advertisers still open for business, it only makes sense for them to slash their ad budgets as their revenues slide because of industry woes. On top of that, the going rates in key-word auctions are plunging because there are fewer eager bidders. Thus, the prices Google fetches for paid search are probably declining, especially as fewer Internet leads turn into actual transactions, the hedge-fund manager says...
Even if the ad cost per loan application is lower, the end-customer pool is drying up. The customers generated by Web ads are people who won't be able to afford homes under tighter credit and won't be able to refinance after having tossed their house keys back to the banks.
Of more concern to us than Google's mortgage exposure, moreover, is the possibility that the mortgage industry will be just the first of many industry dominoes to fall. The "virtuous cycle" of ever-rising house prices that has turbocharged the economy for the past 5 years may reverse into a "vicious cycle"--the same way that tech and telecom spending in the last recession did.
If this happens, a lot more than "mortgage companies" will be affected. The home builders have already been crushed. But then there are home-supply retailers, construction companies, broader financial services companies (you think shutting down whole mortgage divisions is good for their overall finances?). And now that the "home equity withdrawal ATMs" that goosed consumer spending for the last decade have finally been emptied, consumer spending could take a hit. And that will hurt the rest of the economy (even Google).
Not a happy scenario, and certainly not a given. But Google fans (and Google itself) won't do themselves any favors by hallucinating that the company is "immune."
Not to worry for Google -- all the missing mortgage ads will be replaced by attorneys trolling for clients to sue their mortgage company.
Posted by: expectingrain | September 23, 2007 at 02:08 PM
Andrew, if you even find out the share of the mortgage industry ads to the overall Google online advertising business, please let me know. I am concerned about it. This will not only affect Google, but also small website publishers like myself (I just built http://mortgage700.com/ )who has already spend a lot of money trying to promote mortgage-related websites. Google is such a big company that I'm sure will be able to cushion mortgage-related advertisement losses by others new trends (political ads or ads by bankruptcy lawyers, but how about small business owners?
Many people believe Google only makes money out of its search engine, but the truth is that most of its revenue comes from its network of associated websites that display the "Ads by Google" advertisement.
Posted by: Mortgage-Trends | November 19, 2007 at 08:46 AM