Who does Alphabet advertise to?

Spending money to advertise to who exactly?

[SumGuy]

I came across a recent article that listed the top-10 advertisers for 2019. Names like Verizon, Walt Disney, Proctor and Gamble, At&T, GM, etc. All names that sell stuff to Joe Citizen. Amazon was on the top of the list at $6.9 billion followed by Comcast at $6.1 billion. GM was #10 at $3 billion.

Now we can talk about Amazon maybe some other time - I for one haven't watched TV for the better part of the last decade and my PC's have massive hosts files that block all ads, so my exposure to advertising is practically zero but I'm curious why Amazon has to advertise - and where (ie who's getting Amazon's ad money?).

But what I found really curious is that Alphabet is on that list at #6 ($3 billion) just below #5 (Walt Disney). What products is Alphabet advertising, who are they paying that ad money to, where are those ads showing up, and who is the target of those ads?

[phranque]

i rarely watch commercial television but i've recently been watching some sports that has included a significant amount of google search advertising.

i would assume google advertising is included in the alphabet numbers much as chevrolet advertising would show up in GM numbers.

[engine]

If you take P&G as an example, it is the overall advertising and marketing for all its individual brands that are included in the figure. Alphabet would be the same, with Google being the larger part of that figure. Don't forget that Google pays to be included in certain services, such as Apple search, and that alone is estimated to be around $3 billion.

[Brett_Tabke]

You tube.tv and Youtube red, both advertise quite a bit.
I have Google Fiber and see an ad for them about twice a week on Facebook. They spend a huge amount on Facebook ads.
Then you have chromebooks, pixel phone, nest, chromecast and other android based stuff.
Then you just don't know how much they include as advertising on their own properties.

[engine]

I always think it's quite funny that Google advertises on FB.

[NickMNS]

What Brett said. Google has a lot of products (besides search) many of which are consumer products.

I always think it's quite funny that Google advertises on FB.

The opposite is true too, in fact I ended up blocking FB in my Adsense account due to the deluge of pointless spammy FB ads that were appearing on my website. I also considered doing the same for Google, well specifically for anything to do with Goolge play. Spammy app providers would advertise their apps through play.Google.com. Not sure who in the end was paying for the ads, but url was play.google.com.

[Brett_Tabke]

Turns out, maybe much of that FB advertising is quid-pro-quo

Facebook Inc and Alphabet's Google allegedly colluded to manipulate auctions for online advertising through a series of deals to fortify their market power illegally.

[politico.com...]

[csdude55]

Lesser known fact is that a lot of TV and radio stations are paid to include their FB link or to promote Google News on their stations and websites. It's not a traditional ad, but more of a product placement. I used to do this one myself, I kept a few local radio DJs on retainer for $1,000 /month to regularly talk about things they'd read on my sites.

Any time you watch a movie and the character references Google, Facebook, Tinder, etc... they were probably paid for it. Had they not been then they would have mentioned one of their competitors that would pay.

[tangor]

Advertise to? Anyone that can hear their name and be convinced they are a ...

fill in the blank.

Spending money usually makes MORE money down the road.

Anything else is just asking WHERE they spend their money ... and what results the hope to achieve.

[sem4u]

In the UK, I have seen a lot of ads encouraging users to leave Google reviews for their local businesses.

[lammert]

Google's advertising is needed to keep their ads model afloat. When their ad model collapses, the company collapses. Other revenue streams are still marginal. Their main problem is their ad auction model of supply and demand. As long as publishing space (SERPs and AdSense) is more scarce than available ads, the price in their auction model for ads goes up. But with the current pandemic, many advertisers have bailed out of on-line advertising, waiting for better times, while the number of page views has been growing significantly due to all the people sitting at home.

New advertisers will fill in ad slots and compete with the existing advertisers, increasing the price they can get for each available ad slot.