MarketWatch has interviewed some Google (GOOG) advertisers with fairly large budgets and found that a number of them feel that ad prices on the big search engine are getting so high that they have to cut back. The group interviewed by MarketWatch spent between $4 million and $10 million on search ads last year.
The process employed by MarketWatch is hardly scientific, but, if the financial website has uncovered a trend among Google ad customers, the lofty price of the stock could be in trouble as its Q4 06 and Q1 07 numbers hit the market.
At $468, Google may seem low to the price targets of some banks, which see the stock moving over $600.
But, if Google’s advertisers are cutting back due to higher costs, the 52-week low of $331.55 is not that far away.
Douglas A. McIntyre can be reached at [email protected]. He does not own securities in companies that he writes about.