Google posted revenues of $5.19 billion for the year’s first quarter — an increase of 42 percent compared to one year earlier and a seven percent rise from the prior quarter. By contrast, the company’s traffic-acquisition costs amounted to only $1.49 billion, or 29 percent of advertising revenues, company executives said.

The search giant’s ongoing innovation in search, ads and apps helped drive healthy growth globally across its product lines, noted Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt.

“As we integrate DoubleClick into our advertising platform, we see exciting new ways to improve the user experience and increase value for our advertisers and partners,” Schmidt explained. “Also, while exercising operational discipline, we continue to explore opportunities that add value to users everywhere and to Google in the enlarged term.”

Overseas Revenue

Despite a weakening economy, Google’s paid-click growth in the U.S. “remains healthy, and other markets showed strong growth as well,” noted CFO George Reyes. Aggregate paid clicks

— which include clicks related to ads served on Google properties as well as ads served on partner sites — grew 20 percent by the year-earlier period, and were up by four percent by the prior quarter.

Even better, Google’s overseas revenue increased to $2.65 billion and now accounts for 51 percent of the company’s total revenue. “International markets have tremendous potential for growth,” Reyes said. “Asia and Latin America continue to show impressive growth, as well as India, Argentina, Australia and Japan being notable performers in the quarter.”

Although the advertising business is still nascent in China, the Chinese Net is so large that the numbers are significant, Schmidt said. “We believe that China will continue to be a good market for us,” he said.

Paid-Click Growth

Google’s CEO plus pointed out that Google’s paid-click growth has turned out to be much higher than expected by third…

Orginal post by Top Tech News