Barron’s: GOOG Impacted by Mortgage Advertising

Barron’s is questioning how Google could be immune from the slowdown in mortgage related advertising. They quote Fred Hickey, writer of the popular High Tech Investor newsletter, who stated that Google’s revenues will take a hit in 3Q and beyond due to the mortgage and housing slowdown. They go on to say that a number of mortgage originators, brokers, and affiliate businesses have gone out of business and as such a number of advertisers have disappeared from the market. Also, they state that huge financial firms have exited certain mortgage businesses such as sub-rime. Surviving advertisers can only logically pare back advertising to align costs with lower revenues. Lastly, they state that keyword pricing have dropped as there are less advertisers to bid on these keywords. Then they go on to quote a hedge fund manager who states some major lenders spend millions on paid search over and above the $10K for every lead that results in a closed loan – the math doesn’t work according to him.