Google’s UK advertising income is expected this year to exceed that of ITV, Britain’s leading commercial TV broadcaster. Google’s Q1/2011 UK revenues were almost $1 billion (£593m). Its UK revenues are growing at a steady 25 per cent per quarter, and on this basis could top $5.2 billion this year, or more.

Even after discounting its ‘cost of sales’, that is its traffic acquisition costs which goes to the likes of AOL, Myspace and Google’s other web-site partners for generating traffic towards Google’s pages, its revenues are likely to still hit at least £2.5 billion this year – and this is significantly ahead of ITV’s revenues which are unlikely to exceed £1.7 billion.

Numis Securities, which provided the forecasts, said the UK is the only country other than the USA where a detailed examination of Google’s numbers is possible. Britain is already a powerful cash-source for Google, which generates more than 10 per cent of its revenues from the UK.

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