Fed’s Evans Says Government Shutdown Will Probably Delay Taper

Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago President Charles Evans, an advocate of monetary stimulus, said fiscal strife in Washington will probably delay the central bank’s tapering of its monthly bond purchases. “October’s a tough one,” Evans said in a CNBC interview today. “We need a couple of good labor reports, and evidence of increasing growth, GDP growth, and it’s probably going to take a few months to sort that one out.” Policy makers, who meet again next week, will pare the monthly pace of asset buying to $70 billion from $85 billion at their March 18-19 meeting, according to the median of 40 responses in an Oct. 17-18 Bloomberg News survey of economists. Forecasters pushed out their estimates following the partial government shutdown, which they said reduced growth by 0.3 percentage point this quarter. The 16-day partial closing, which took place as Republicans and Democrats clashed over passing a budget and lifting the nation’s borrowing limit, was resolved last week when President Barack Obama signed legislation opening the government until Jan. 15 and suspending the debt ceiling through Feb. 7. Congress now is attempting to reach a budget deal by Dec. 13. “It’s very difficult to feel confident in December given that we’re going to repeat part of what just took place in Washington,” Evans said. Closing Disrupted The closing disrupted the collection and publication of economic data reports, which the Fed says it needs to gauge whether the expansion can handle a slowdown in the central bank’s $85 billion-per-month pace of asset purchases, a policy known as quantitative easing. The Federal Open Market Committee delayed the taper in September because it needed evidence of sustainable labor-market improvement, and “we haven’t had a lot of data since the meeting,” said Evans, who is a voting member of the group. The FOMC’s last two meetings this year are scheduled for Oct. 29-30 and Dec. 17-18. Evans, who didn’t put a number on the cost of the federal shutdown, said that government actions have shaved at least one percentage point from U.S. economic growth this year. Asked if quantitative easing could increase in the face of more deficit reduction, Evans said “we’re going to have to go into every meeting and look at the landscape.” Inflation Turning “If we saw a different kind of outlook, or if inflation started turning down, we’d have to ask ourselves whether we could add more,” Evans said, adding that he favors providing as much monetary accommodation as is needed. He said he doesn’t see a clear limit to how far the Fed’s balance sheet can be expanded. “There’s a tremendous amount of capacity, we could go on as long as necessary, especially if we were in a period of falling inflation,” Evans said. “I’m not looking for that to happen. I think the economy is going to do better, especially once a number of these headwinds step down and stop causing trouble.” Evans also said today that he’s “been surprised that the markets have not been able to look at our separate tools” of quantitative easing and forward guidance. The Fed has pledged to keep the main interest rate near zero as long as unemployment exceeds 6.5 percent and the outlook for inflation doesn’t go above 2.5 percent. “There’s nothing that we have said about our forward guidance that should cause anybody to think that we’re going to step back prematurely,” said Evans. “That is before we hit 6.5 percent or even, you know, we might go on longer than that.” The unemployment rate was 7.3 percent in August.

Higher mobile volume, in the form of paid clicks, has made up for lower advertising prices

SAN FRANCISCO – Google is losing the battle against falling ad prices, but still winning the online advertising war.

In its earnings report on Thursday, the company revealed the decline of a key pricing metric has once again accelerated, as its cost-per-click fell 8% from a year earlier.

The reason is a surge in mobile ads, which cost less per unit and have lower click rates than those served onto desktop computers.

Google CEO Larry Page said almost 40% of the traffic on the company's YouTube video site now comes from mobile device users, up from 6% two years ago.

Yet, the search giant more than made up for lower prices with higher volume, as its number of paid clicks climbed 26% year-over-year. That was higher than the 21% jump reported by rival Yahoo.

The net result was a 19% jump in quarterly revenue (or 12% including its lagging Motorola handset unit) and a 36% surge in net income.

Google's ad numbers suggest that changes that the company has made to how it sells advertising have merely slowed — not stopped — the downward pricing pressure caused by a surge in mobile ad traffic.

Close Google watchers will remember that the impact of mobile ads on Google's business first revealed itself 15 months ago, during its quarterly earnings report in July 2012.

That's when the company reported its cost-per-click dropped 16% from a year earlier, alarming Wall Street and prompting a short-term drop in its stock price.

In response, Google made changes to how it deals with professional online ad buyers, essentially stripping them of the ability to target ads at either desktop, tablet or smartphone users.

Instead, the company's technology now determines where and when to place text and video ads onto those different platforms, based on where Google thinks is best.

John Shinal, technology columnist for USA TODAY.(Photo: USA TODAY)

Thanks to the new method, which Google has dubbed "enhanced campaigns," the company earlier this year had slowed the annual rate of decline in its cost-per-click to 4%.

Yet, the decline has accelerated during the last two quarters, and for the period ended in September, prices were falling at twice that rate.

The reason is mobile.

Google's algorithms can't change the fact that most mobile device users think cheap-looking text ads that pop up on smartphones or tablets are more annoying than enticing.

Annoying ads aren't clicked on as frequently as relevant ones, which is one reason mobile ads are so cheap per unit.

The click-through rate for ads served on Android-powered tablets fell to 2.3% in the third quarter, from 3.2% a year earlier, according to a report released this week from market researcher, The Search Agency.

For smartphone users, the rate dropped to 3.1% from 3.9%.

Sheer volume is another reason for the decline. The number of these ads is exploding as more consumers make the switch from desktop computers to mobile devices.

That same report from The Search Agency showed that one-third of the clicks on Google search ads in the U.S. now come from mobile users.

No wonder mobile ad revenue skyrocketed 145% during the first half of this year to $3 billion, compared with the same period in 2012, according to the latest report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau, a trade group.

That's eight times faster growth than the overall online ad market.

Those findings were echoed in the data from The Search Agency, which found that click volume on tablets in the U.S. surged 63% during the third quarter, and tablet advertising spending, 68%.

The surge came even though the cost-per-click for all ads displayed on tablets in the U.S. fell 10.4% in the third quarter, compared with a year earlier, as the report said.

Clearly, there's money to be made in mobile ads, and Google — no surprise — is capturing a large chunk of it, even as the average unit price of its search ads continues to fall.