by Laurie Sullivan @lauriesullivan, October 26, 2017

Despite the fake news challenges that Google has endured during the past year, Alphabet reported Thursday that revenue hit $27.77 billion for the third quarter of 2017.

The cost-per-click on Google properties rose 1% from the year-ago quarter. Revenue from other properties rose to $24 billion, up from 19.8 billion, respectively.

“While Google continues to charge more for cost per clicks, marketers are not reducing spend on Google’s platform, which clearly bears positive outcomes for their campaigns,” said AdRoll VP of Marketing Shane Murphy.

Murphy said that given consumer expectations, marketers need access to data like location and browsing history as well as the ability to analyze and apply this data across the customer journey, following website to website, from mobile to desktop.

Google’s other revenue, such as hardware and cloud services, came in at $3.4 billion — up from $2.43 billion a year ago.

Traffic acquisition costs, which Google pays to partners, rose to $3.1 billion spent for the quarter.

Operating loss for Other Bets — businesses other than Alphabet companies like Nest, and Waymo — came in at $812 million.

Microsoft also reported earnings Thursday after the bell. The company reported that search advertising revenue, excluding traffic acquisition costs, rose 15%, driven by higher revenue per search and search volume.

Microsoft Surface revenue increased 12%, driven by sales of the new Surface Laptop. Revenue from gaming rose 1%, driven by Xbox software and services revenue growth of 21%, which was partially offset by lower Xbox revenue.

Microsoft reported that revenue rose 12% to $24.5 billion in the quarter, driven by growth in Productivity and Business Processes and Intelligent Cloud.

Productivity and Business Processes revenue increased, driven by the acquisition of LinkedIn and higher revenue from Office. Intelligent Cloud revenue increased, primarily due to higher revenue from server products and cloud services. More Personal Computing revenue was relatively unchanged, with lower revenue from phones offset by higher revenue from search advertising and Surface.

MediaPost.com: Search Marketing Daily

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