Hasta La Creative!

Google, the dominant player in search, online display and mobile advertising, is finding a trickle of revenue elsewhere.

Long criticized as a one-trick pony, Google is learning some new tricks that don’t include search or selling ads to Madison Avenue. Advertising used to regularly account for more than 96% of Google’s total sales, but that has been slipping over the last year and in the latest period its down to 91% or $12.5 billion of Google’s $13.8 billion revenue, which was up 19% year-over-year. That doesn’t include its struggling Motorola Mobility mobile phone business.

Google’s non-ads business — which includes the company’s cut from movie rentals or app purchases through Google Play and the sale of hardware like Chromebooks and streaming media dongle Chromecast — grew its revenue by 85% to $1.2 billion. By comparison, advertising grew 15%.

Continue reading at AdAge.com