Search Biz: Guerilla Artists Protest Google, Search Tops Online Spending Categories, Google Potentially Moving Mini To The Cloud, Predictions About Google Consumer Marketing

Other than discussion of online advertising revenues, it’s an all-Google day for Search Biz: rumors of Google Mini being replaced by a hosted solution, a “public art” protest about Google doing business with the Chinese government, and speculation about the future of consumer marketing at Google.

First, the substantive news. The Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers issued a final report on FY2007 online ad revenues. Online ad revenues grew 26 percent over 2006 and reached $21.2 billion for the full year. Here are the high-level findings:

–Search remains the largest revenue format, accounting for 41 percent on 2007 full year revenues, up from the 40 percent reported in 2006. Search advertising revenues total $8.8 billion for the full year 2007, up 30 percent from the $6.8 billion reported in 2006.
–Display-related advertising totaled $7.1 billion, or 34 percent of full year 2007 revenues compared to $5.4 billion (32 percent of total reported in 2006. Display-related advertising includes Display ads (21% or $4.5 billion of 2007 full year revenues), Rich Media (8% or $1.7 billion), Digital Video (2% or$324 million) and Sponsorship (3% or $636 million).
–Classifieds revenues accounted for 16 percent of 2007 full year revenues or $3.3 billion, down slightly from the 18 percent ($3.1 billion) reported for 2006.
–Lead Generation revenues accounted for 7 percent of the 2007 full year revenues or $1.6 billion, down from the 8 percent or $1.3 billion reported in 2006.

Search dollars thus grew in an absolute sense, but the relative mix of search to other ad types/formats did not. Indeed, the proportional mix remained largely unchanged for most ad formats.

TechCrunch is reporting a rumor that Google is going to replace the “Mini,” a small-business version of its search appliance (for enterprise search), with a hosted solution that will include some additional features and capabilities (e.g., automatic indexing of subscriber sites/pages). The potential new service will be paid and still target small business customers.

John Battelle ponders what he considers to be the inevitability of Google undertaking consumer marketing, which it has done for Google Transit and Goog411, and in very isolated cases before these instances (e.g., sponsorship of public TV show Nova). As Google grows into a more conventional, mature company it will necessarily engage in consumer marketing, which will take various forms. The only question will be whether Google can match the creativity and branding success of its corporate uncle Apple.

Finally, some folks at satirical art-protest group Billboard Liberation Front protested Google doing business with China and participating in the Chinese censorship of search results by erecting a mock “great firewall of China” in front of the Google sign at the company’s Mountain View, California headquarters, the same day as Google’s annual shareholders meeting. Google Blogoscoped has video.

It’s fitting that we end with comScore data for April, which crowns Google as the number one site on the Internet.

Have a good weekend.