Either Google is kindly responding to its customers’ requests… or is looking for more and more revenue opportunities… or both, but the search engine has decided to allow Internet marketers to display ads that mention hard alcohol and liqueurs on Google Adwords.

In a follow-up to its decision to allow beer advertising in autumn this year, Google will now allow search engine marketers to advertise information about hard alcohol and liqueurs that target the U.S.

Advertisers will not, however, be allowed to directly promote the SALE of hard alcohol and liqueurs. They will need to comply with Google’s updated hard alcohol and liqueurs policy, which, among other things, states that they may use Google Adwords to promote information about hard alcohol and liqueurs that their websites contain, such as recipes and brand messages.

While ads that directly promote the sale of hard alcohol and liqueurs won’t be allowed on Google Adwords, ads for beer MAY directly promote its sale.

So, in simple terms, a Google Ads advertiser:

MAY offer a beer for sale at a certain price… MAY promote information about hard alcohol e.g. 50 Great Cocktail Ideas MAY NOT offer a liqueur for sale at a certain price.

Source: Amanda Kelly, “An update to the AdWords alcohol policy,” Inside AdWords crew Monday, December 08, 2008

Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry predicts Google’s revenues will decline over the next three years. He forecasts the company’s revenues will drop from $15.71 billion in 2008… to $15.23 billion in 2009… to $14.57 billion in 2010.

Chowdry’s pessimism derives from research indicating that the challenging economic conditions will impede Google’s online advertising business. Already, he says, the number of keywords sold by Google is down 2-5 percent, with bids on keywords down by as much as 20 percent.

What’s more, Google is focusing more and more on cutting costs and boosting revenues. Over the last few months, the search giant has not only canceled plans to build a data center in Oregon, but has also cut expenditure on food, travel, contractors and Friday afternoon parties.

At the same time the company is aggressively pursuing new revenue opportunities, having opened up new ad channels including Google News, Google Maps, Google Image Search and YouTube.

Presumably, however, Chowdhry regards these moves as insufficient to avoid his predicted three year decline in sales.

Source: Nicholas Carlson, “Google Revenues To Shrink Through 2010″, Silicon Alley Insider, December 2, 2008

Speaking at the MIPCOM Conference in Cannes, France, YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley has compared online video to the early days of television. TechCrunch has published the full transcript on its site, but here are my main take-aways:

• YouTube wants to continue partnering with content owners to help them manage and distribute their content and reach new audiences.
• The days of the ‘centralized distribution hub’ are ending. Today’s consumers want access to content on PCs, TVs, mobile phones and social networking pages.
• The convergence of TV and computers is happening now, and it’s happening faster than anyone expected. For example, around 10 billion videos are viewed monthly online in the U.S. alone, 13 hours of content are uploaded to YouTube each minute, and the number of people consuming video on their PCs is higher than ever before. Meanwhile, the online video advertising market will be worth over a billion dollars by 2010, is expected to reach over $3 billion by 2012, and will then exceed $5 billion by 2013.

According to Hurley, online video provides content producers with four big ‘R’ opportunities: Reach, Research, Revenue, and Rights Management.

Firstly, online video enables producers to reach both massive and targeted audiences of millions of viewers. Secondly, it facilitates more accurate research, with analytic tools able to identify who, why and where content is being watched.

Thirdly, global distribution and analytics tools are giving content producers new revenue opportunities. And finally, online video tools are giving content owners better control the use of their content.

You had me until the last one, Chad.

Certain online video platforms, such as YouTube, may be trying to facilitate rights management… but other platforms, such as the various torrent sites, appear to be successfully undermining rights management!

Still, I do think online video and media convergence is something to be excited about. And that’s probably one of the messages Chad was trying to get across in his MIPCOM presentation.

Source: Michael Arrington, “YouTube Founder Compares Online Video To Nascent TV Market, TechCrunch, October 16, 2008