Tim Armstrong, Google's president of advertising and commerce for North America, said the company would be "disappointed" if it doesn't attain a "very significant position" in the display ad market
over the next two years. Google considers YouTube as the " brightest light" for the company's display-advertising potential, he said.
Speaking at the Bear Stearns Media Conference on
Monday, Armstrong tried to explain recent stats from comScore that Google's paid clicks had suffered a 7% sequential decline in January, compared with December. He said that the decrease in paid
clicks had been due to Google's initiative to improve the quality of those ads' delivery, which resulted in the need for fewer clicks by consumers.
In other news out of the conference, media
tycoon Rupert Murdoch said News Corp. won't challenge Microsoft's bid for Yahoo. "We're not going to get into a fight with Microsoft; they've got a lot more money than us," he said, later adding:
"We're very happy to be in the Google camp. They sell our search advertising and pay us well for it." News Corp.'s social network MySpace has a Web search deal with Google.
--Tanya Irwin
