谷歌：搜索的灵魂？

研究报告显示，谷歌的在线广告收入正在逐渐降低，究其原因主要是消费者从台式电脑向移动设备的迅速转变。

测试中可能遇到的词汇和知识：

acquisition [,ækwɪ'zɪʃ(ə)n] n.获得；所获之物；采集

AB abbr. Interactive Advertising Bureau 互联网广告署

Nanigans Fackbook广告软件公司

Flurry APP数据分析公司

Bernstein 市场研究机构

Google: soul searching(410words)

By Lex October 22, 2014 11:51

There comes a time when all monopolies falter. Think of telecoms operators or utilities, for example. For Google, too, its near-monopoly on search ads will someday end. The company is nowhere near this point yet, of course. But recently there have been signs that Google is no longer quite as untouchable as it once was.

Start with online ads. The market for digital advertising has weakened recently. According to IAB, US digital ad spend grew 14 per cent in the second quarter. Not bad. But that was the lowest rate of growth in two years. More concerning still for Google is that search ads’ share of the digital advertising pie has been shrinking since 2011.

Google is still outgrowing the market – revenues from its own sites, including YouTube, grew 20 per cent in the most recent quarter. But the move away from search is starting to hurt: Bernstein estimates that Google search revenue growth slowed to 17 per cent. Google’s fastest-growing source of revenue has become its lower-margin “other” category, which includes sales from Google Play and is growing at 50 per cent a year.

As ad dollars move away from search, Google has been losing share of the overall online advertising market to Facebook. In the US, eMarketer expects Google’s share of digital ads to fall from 40 per cent (2013), to 38 per cent (2014), to 34 per cent (2016). Facebook’s market share is expected to climb from 8 per cent to 11 per cent in the same period.

Part of the problem is that search ads do not seem to be quite as successful on mobile (the fastest-growing part of digital ad spend) as on desktop. People do use search on phones – search is about half of mobile ad spending. But these ads appear to have less impact than targeted social media ads, and could fall off quickly as more effective forms of mobile advertising are found. Facebook, which has a higher ad market share on mobile than on desktop, has seen its click-through rate triple over the past year, according to Nanigans.

Unfortunately for Google, mobile advertising is getting increasingly crowded. Snapchat, a popular photo-sharing app, is launching ads. And Yahoo is trying to boost its mobile ad offering with its acquisition of Flurry. The search business naturally tends towards monopoly. But the advertising business, ex-search, does not.

请根据你所读到的文章内容，完成以下自测题目：

1.What dose the word "shrink" mean?

A. Thrive

B. Stable

C. Expand

D. Compress

答案(1)

2.Why dose the author mention IAB in the second paragraph?

A. To explain why the digital advertising market has weakened recently.

B. To support the viewpoint that digital advertising market has weakened.

C. To argue the point that digital advertising market has weakened recently.

答案(2)

3.According to this article, which company might NOT be the competitor of mobile advertising for Google?

A. Facebook

B. Yahoo

C. Snapchat

D. Microsoft

答案(3)

* * *

(1) 答案：D

解释：通过原文可推断，谷歌公司所占的搜索广告市场份额从2011年起开始逐渐下降，故选择Compress压缩,其他三个选项的含义分别为：thrive繁荣；stable稳定；expand扩张。

(2) 答案：B

解释：作者在第二段提到互联网广告署的统计数据，是为了支持他的观点，而并非反驳或解释原因。

(3) 答案：D

解释：原文中提到Facebook、Yahoo和Snapchat在移动广告方面的计划可能会对谷歌在此方面的发展产生影响，但并未提及Microsoft是否有相关计划。