Although shareholders didn’t respond too well to Google’s first quarter earnings report – Google’s stock dipped afterward, and is now down 5.80 percent – analysts generally liked what they saw.  A roundup determined that four brokerages raised their price targets, while just two cut them.

Alphabetically, Bank of America Merrill Lynch comes first among Google’s supporters, and according to Reuters, it expects the company to hit $685 instead of $670.  Next up is Jefferies & Co., which increased its price target from $695 to $710.

The third member of this supportive group is MKM Partners, which has confidence that Google will soon reach $600 rather than $570, and finally there’s Susquehanna Financial Group, with a price target of $755 replacing its old one of $735.

The two dissenting opinions belong to Barclays Capital and Kaufman Bros.  These outnumbered organizations trimmed their targets from $675 to $650 and from $740 to $725, respectively.

Google can at least be pleased that those last two estimates remain higher than some of the "up" forecasts, then.  The company just needs to get past the big dip that followed its earnings report yesterday afternoon.

Google’s poised for another quantifiable growth spurt, this time in Japan.  Officials have confirmed that the search giant will be moving into a larger office space this year, joining Yahoo Japan, Ferrari Japan, and a number of other interesting companies in Mori Tower.

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

A Google representative and a Mori Building representative both confirmed the impending change to Tomoko Yamazaki and Yoshinori Eki.  The Google rep also indicated that this move will help Google accommodate additional employees.

Unfortunately, that’s about all the information the spokespeople shared; no further details regarding square footage, prices, or specific dates are available.

Still, more background info is out there.  For example: other Mori Tower tenants include Barclays Capital, Goldman Sachs, the Grand Hyatt Tokyo, Konami, and Salesforce.com, signaling that Google will be sharing a roof with a number of successful and well-regarded companies. 

This means the relocation can’t be the start of another Googleplex, though, with the American organization building its own little city.

Then here’s one last idea: this development may relate to an undersea fiber optic cable that Google (along with several other corporations) paid to establish between the U.S. and Japan.

This could be the year of the display ad. That’s not to say that display ads aren’t prevalent every year, but Google has only been involved with that for a little while, and if analysts’ projections are accurate, this will be the year that Google’s display ad business tops $1 billion in sales.

Last summer, Google CEO Eric Schmidt suggested that display ads would be Google’s next big billion-dollar business. According to BusinessWeek, a Barclays Capital analyst says display ads will account for about 4% of Google’s total sales in 2010. This would be a 40% increase from their contribution in 2009. BW’s Douglas MacMillan reports:

Sales of video and banner ads on YouTube, the world’s most popular video site, are expected by analysts at Barclays to contribute the bulk of Google’s display revenue this year, about $700 million. And with DoubleClick, Google acquired a technology that handles the placement of display ads on sites across the Web. "Display is now a key business for us," says Susan Wojcicki, Google’s vice-president of product management and one of the company’s earliest employees.

Neal Mohan, the executive in charge of Google’s display business, says Google will draw on its strength in search-related advertising to expand in display. It became the leader in search by using algorithms to help it know which ads to place where. "Our goal is to bring the science of search to the art of display," Mohan says.

Advertisers will probably not be shy about getting on board with that. "Research has shown that exposure to both search and display ads from the same advertiser results in a 22 percent increase for conversion rates over search alone," Rich Kahn, CEO of display ad provider eZanga told WebProNews last year.

Back in November, Google announced its acquisition of Teracent, a provider of "intelligent dynamic display advertising". It provides machine-learning algorithms, which can create customized display ads based on thousands of different creative elements.

Google says the one on the right was created with Teracent’s technology.

"Teracent’s technology can pick and choose from literally thousands of creative elements of a display ad in real-time — tweaking images, products, messages or colors," Google said. "These elements can be optimized depending on factors like geographic location, language, the content of the website, the time of day or the past performance of different ads."

Before that announcement, Google launched a tool to measure the impact of display ad campaigns across the Google Content Network called Campaign Insights, which Google says can give reliable data about how a campaign has raised brand awareness or active user interest in a particular product or service. Google has also repeatedly added new templates  for advertisers to use when constructing their creative.
 

Related Articles:

> Does Size Matter in Display Advertising?

> Google Launches New Display Ad Measurement Tool

> Google Launches New Templates for Display Ads

This could be the year of the display ad. That’s not to say that display ads aren’t prevalent every year, but Google has only been involved with that for a little while, and if analysts’ projections are accurate, this will be the year that Google’s display ad business tops $1 billion in sales.

Last summer, Google CEO Eric Schmidt suggested that display ads would be Google’s next big billion-dollar business. According to BusinessWeek, a Barclays Capital analyst says display ads will account for about 4% of Google’s total sales in 2010. This would be a 40% increase from their contribution in 2009. BW’s Douglas MacMillan reports:

Sales of video and banner ads on YouTube, the world’s most popular video site, are expected by analysts at Barclays to contribute the bulk of Google’s display revenue this year, about $700 million. And with DoubleClick, Google acquired a technology that handles the placement of display ads on sites across the Web. "Display is now a key business for us," says Susan Wojcicki, Google’s vice-president of product management and one of the company’s earliest employees.

Neal Mohan, the executive in charge of Google’s display business, says Google will draw on its strength in search-related advertising to expand in display. It became the leader in search by using algorithms to help it know which ads to place where. "Our goal is to bring the science of search to the art of display," Mohan says.

Advertisers will probably not be shy about getting on board with that. "Research has shown that exposure to both search and display ads from the same advertiser results in a 22 percent increase for conversion rates over search alone," Rich Kahn, CEO of display ad provider eZanga told WebProNews last year.

Back in November, Google announced its acquisition of Teracent, a provider of "intelligent dynamic display advertising". It provides machine-learning algorithms, which can create customized display ads based on thousands of different creative elements.

Google says the one on the right was created with Teracent’s technology.

"Teracent’s technology can pick and choose from literally thousands of creative elements of a display ad in real-time — tweaking images, products, messages or colors," Google said. "These elements can be optimized depending on factors like geographic location, language, the content of the website, the time of day or the past performance of different ads."

Before that announcement, Google launched a tool to measure the impact of display ad campaigns across the Google Content Network called Campaign Insights, which Google says can give reliable data about how a campaign has raised brand awareness or active user interest in a particular product or service. Google has also repeatedly added new templates  for advertisers to use when constructing their creative.
 

Related Articles:

> Does Size Matter in Display Advertising?

> Google Launches New Display Ad Measurement Tool

> Google Launches New Templates for Display Ads

Google’s given its presentation, tech reviewers have had their say, and, after months of buildup, the Nexus One should soon start appearing in the real world.  So how – in a sales sense – will it fare?  According to a Barclays Capital analyst, the Nexus One will be a rather hot item.

In a note released this morning, Doug Anmuth indicated that Google might sell 5 or 6 million units in 2010, generating incremental revenue of between $2.6 billion and $3.2 billion.  Which would appear to make for a pretty great debut; it should go without saying that tons of companies would kill for those numbers.

Indeed, to put the data into perspective, John Paczkowski pointed out, "Motorola’s (MOT) 2010 global smartphone shipments are expected to be somewhere around 13 million units."  Also, 6 million Nexus Ones sold in a year works out to about 16,400 finding new homes every day.

Still, to look at even bigger picture, Barclays predicted in September that at least 7 million iPhones will sell in just the first quarter of 2010.  Plus there’s little hope that Google will make much of a profit off the Nexus One, however many units it sells.

At least it’ll be an interesting story to watch.  Google’s already gone in an unusual direction by promoting the Nexus One on its typically-spartan homepage.

Related Articles:

> Google Unveils Nexus One "Super Phone"

> AdMob Determines Android Is Growing Faster Than Ever

> Google Phone Excitement Builds Ahead Of Jan. 5 Event

Twitter’s financial affairs may be receiving a lot of attention today, but at least one analyst hasn’t forgotten about the search and advertising giant we all usually watch.  In fact, Doug Anmuth of Barclays Capital decided to upgrade his estimates for Google this morning.

Anmuth’s price target is now set at $575.00, which would represent an increase of about 16.2 percent over Google’s current standing at $494.97.  That’s a nice gain, especially given the still-iffy state of the overall economy.

Anmuth wasn’t just making up comforting numbers, though.  If you look at the graph below (which comes courtesy of Google Finance), it becomes hard to dispute the idea that Google’s stock is on the mend after hitting a three-year low of $247.30 in November. 

 Moreover, while adjusting his forecast, Anmuth cited "[i]mproving macro conditions, a stronger ad market, & FX tailwinds" in addition to some industry scuttlebutt, according to Dan Frommer.

Unfortunately for existing shareholders and/or Google fans, it just doesn’t look like the climb to $575 is going to start today – Google’s stock is down 0.36 percent at the moment in rough accordance with the rest of the market.

Microsoft’s share of U.S. Internet searches rose modestly in June with the launch of Bing accounting for 8.4 percent of queries, up from 8 percent in May, according to comScore.

Yahoo saw its search share fall to 19.6 percent, from 20.1 percent in May, while Google’s share remained flat at 65 percent.

In a report, Douglas Anmuth, an analyst for Barclays Capital, wrote he had been expecting Bing’s share to come in between 10 percent and 11 percent. He said the comScore data was good news to investors of Google and Yahoo concerned about Bing’s initial impact.

"While the share gain is positive for Microsoft, and Bing was the only one of the 3 large search engines to increase queries [from month to month], we had expected Bing share to come in between 10-11%," Anmuth wrote.

Mike Nichols

"As a result, we believe the search data is a slight positive for both Google & Yahoo, and it should serve as a sigh of relief to some investors who were concerned about the early impact of Bing. Bing’s gains did come virtually all from Yahoo, but the overall impact was still less than anticipated."

In a statement, Mike Nichols, general manager of Bing, said the company was "gratified to see some upward momentum for Bing in the public numbers from comScore" and was working hard to "build a loyal fan base for Bing."

In a recent blog post, Microsoft reported that Bing saw 8 percent growth in unique users in June and that advertiser TigerDirect had seen its sales and order volume triple since the launch of Bing.