Google Display: You’ve come a long way, Baby

“You’ve come a long way, Baby” is my favourite techno album from Fatboy Slim, and famous slogan for Virginia Slims. This 1968 campaign is actually blamed for spreading the smoking habit among young women.

I remember a very senior Google executive telling me few years ago “not only is display advertising waste of money, I do not understand why people advertise on TV”. That was a big statement to make in favour of performance advertising. But Google has been a great pioneer and innovator, in advertising, not just Internet advertising. The CPC bid model on Adwords can be termed as one of the greatest innovations in Internet advertising, with revenues going in excess of $25 billion.

Google’s SME strategy was key part of this programme to put SMEs in competitive position with the big brands. It is estimated that 60-70 per cent of Google’s revenue is from SMEs. Google had various programmes to push this growth, giving out free Adwords vouchers, reseller schemes, jumpstart programmes and partnership programmes with local players. The motto was RoI and performance, and discouraging clients to spend money in brand building.

The whole theme of the programme was to undersell conventional brand building of any kind and go for performance, leads/ enquiries to be precise. With all the theories of performance, science of optimising landing pages, playing with CPC, CTC (click to conversion) rates and finally CPAs (cost per acquisition). For several years, Google hinted on a CPA programme, wherein one has to pay for acquisition itself, but it never came along. Although Google third parties did add many tools to optimise performance right from campaign building on Adwords to managing CPAs.

As soon as Google took over Doubleclick, everyone knew the intent was to control the world inventory and offer display advertising with the best behavioral targeting. I wrote about it in 2008, you can refer to my blog (http://www.internetevolution.com/author.asp?section_id=687&doc_id=161561). It took Google to obtain US and EU privacy permissions, and finally put in a single cookie for both Doubleclick and Google. Doubleclick accounts for almost 60-70 per cent of display advertising in the world. Google over time has made integration (with Adwords and Adsense) and new enhancements in Doubleclick exchange, and campaign management, you check that here (http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/09/doubleclick-ad-exchange-growing-display.html) and here (http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/next-generation-of-ad-serving-for.html). Google also took over Admob, and integrated that as well to adwords. The intent, next stop display!

And then this came along: http://www.google.com/adwords/watchthisspace/.

When I saw this site, I was really amused, not in mocking way, but in a way “You’ve come a long way, Baby!” A firm that criticised all non-performance mediums and brand building, will now offer the same. But this is nothing new, seemed like the obvious step after Doubleclick buyout, and to grow their revenues by attacking the display side. Just to mention here, Google has a display option in Adwords for a long time, and I tried it out in 2006, but performance was not good primarily to due positions offered.

I have no doubts about Google’s ability to deliver. It is going to provide the best of rich-media innovations, best serving and reporting, and easiest ways to put up a campaign. The question: will it put a sales force behind it?

The result:
Google’s Q3 results featured $2.5 billion on display, and $1 billion on mobile, taking Google’s share to $600 billion.

The debate:
Will Google be more than a ‘one-trick pony’? Please see these links:
Techcrunch (http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/20/google-display-yaho/)
Reuters (http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSSGE69E0FQ20101015)
SFgate(http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2010/10/15/businessinsider-googles-25-billion-of-display-revenue-is-not-as-impressive-as-it-sounds-2010-10.DTL )
WSJ (http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20101015-710497.html)