Proprietary Properties, Third-Party Network and Efficiency Are Search Giant’s Strategies for Success
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — For a company that has made a big business of indexing third-party websites, a substantial part of Google’s display success hinges on its ability to milk YouTube and its other owned and operated properties such as Gmail and Google Finance.
In fact, those areas were two of the three big priorities outlined by VP Neal Mohan at a press briefing last week where a parade of Google executives described the company’s plans to expand its ad business beyond search keywords.
“Display is truly at a tipping point,” Mr. Mohan said. “We think it can be substantially larger than the $20 billion it is today, whether [it’s] $40 billion, $60 billion, or $80 billion, but there are a lot of challenges that remain.”
Mr. Mohan said there were gross inefficiencies to the display ad buying process. As an example, he said it takes 30 days or more to get a creative advertising unit up and running. “That process should be much more streamlined,” he said.
Display in Gmail
But perhaps the more significant strategy on display was Mr. Mohan’s presentation of what he called the Google Display Network, which included YouTube as well as Google properties Google Finance, Google Maps, Google Books and even Gmail. Mr. Mohan did not detail what a display unit might look like in Gmail, and a company insider said it has yet to work out the specific ad requirements against those properties. Google Finance, for example, did not initially feature advertising, but it now runs rectangle-sized ads.
Beyond Mr. Mohan’s remarks, the company last week made a couple more moves that could affect its owned and operated inventory. First, it acquired ITA Software Inc., a software company that specializes in organizing and searching flight information such as ticket prices and flight times, for $700 million in cash. ITA licenses its product to a broad array of websites and airlines, such as Hotwire, Orbitz, American Airlines and Continental Airlines.
Though the deal is sure to draw close scrutiny from the Federal Trade Commission, the acquisition could help the search giant fill out its owned and operated pages as well as further dominate search. (The FTC recently approved Google’s $750 million acquisition of mobile advertising firm AdMob.) Although a company insider says there are no plans at the moment to monetize the flight-travel search pages generated by the purchase of ITA, the deal will no doubt increase Google’s lineup of owned properties.
At the Guardian’s technology conference last Thursday, CEO Eric Schmidt added more fuel to the rumor that Google is launching a social network called Google Me, which could increase its owned pages. When asked if Google Me is fact or fiction, Mr. Schmidt equivocated in his response, saying, “That would be a product announcement, and I won’t say.”
Facebook’s display dominance
Creating a service to rival Facebook could help Google boost its distant rank among display advertising publishers. According to ComScore, Google sites (including YouTube) place sixth among web publishers for display ad impressions at 25.8 billion, the equivalent of 2.4% of the total impressions for the first quarter of 2010. Facebook easily dominated the display ad market for the same period at 16.2% or 176.3 billion impressions.
Facebook’s top spot in display advertising suggests that any attempt by Google to grab more of the pie will surely have to include growing out its own properties. At the same time, the Mountain View-based company plans to also grow its share by better connecting its current crop of publishing partners, which include CNN.com, WashingtonPost.com, RollingStone.com and About.com, to advertisers. The idea there is to serve as a one-stop-shop for both parties, effectively making Google the main go-between for the display business, a role it already owns for search advertising. Google recently acquired Invite Media, a demand-side platform, as part of that strategy.
“Our publishing partners asked us to help them build out better display buying tools,” Mr. Mohan said. “They wanted more control, more streamlining, and that’s what we’re giving them.”

Según el estudio “Observatorio de la juventud”, el 88% utiliza Internet por temas personales y el 72% forma parte de más de una red social.

Este estudio, realizado por Webtools, en colaboración con el bufete de marketing y la red socialTuenti, también expone que el 98% de los jóvenes tiene su propio móvil y el 67% está estudiando.

En el informe han tenido en cuenta al colectivo formado por jóvenes españoles de entre 16 y 21 años a los que se le han realizado más de 900 entrevistas por sexo y edad a nivel nacional. Con él, muchas marcas y empresas han podido conocer los hábitos y preferencias de los jóvenes tanto personales como de consumo y les ha servido para desarrollar futuros planes de acción.

Here are five quick findings from one of Ad Age’s most in-depth reports of the year.
1) Doubling-down can lift you up: In the teeth of the recession, 26 of the nation’s 100 largest advertisers bucked the trend and upped their ad spending in 2009. They were twice as likely to see sales increase as those who didn’t. The sales increases for those companies were slightly higher as well. To be sure, the spending-and-sales gainers were largely in sectors (prescription drugs, household products, fast food) that were less affected by the recession than, say, the automotive sector, where consumer demand (and ad spending) tanked. CMOs and agency folks may feel free to cite this in PowerPoint slides.
2) It was a bad year for the media: The Top 100’s ad spending (measured media plus unmeasured disciplines, such as direct marketing and paid search) crashed an Ad Age record 10.2% with companies noting that what they did spend was often bought on the cheap. “Media deflation” and media discounting were cited as a cost-savings in annual reports from big spenders as Anheuser-Busch InBev to Procter & Gamble. The upside for media: The Top 100’s measured-media spending fell only 6.2%, far below the 12.3% plunge in total U.S. measured-media spending recorded by WPP’s Kantar Media. Even in tough times, big marketers continued to spend on media.
3) Last year was way worse than other bad years: Spending has dropped in only four years since Ad Age started tracking the LNA back before Don Draper joined Sterling Cooper. The 10.2% loss of ad dollars in 2009 is greater than the combined declines in those years.
4) Flat is the new up: Media staffing is a good indicator of market health. After steep job cuts in 2008 and the first half of 2009, jobs have stabilized since September.
5) The internets are catching on: Online display spending surged a whopping 34.2%. Cable and free-standing inserts rose slightly. All other media recorded declines in overall spending. Let’s drill into this a little deeper and look at how the mix is changing:
Average one-year increase on Internet spending: 98.8% Average percent of total dollars that was spent on the Internet: 3.9% up 1.0%
Average one-year decrease on TV spending: 1.4% Average percent of total dollars that was spent on TV: 35.7% up 1.2%
Average one-year decrease on magazine spending: 0.4% Average percent of total dollars that was spent on magazines: 8.7% down 0.5%
Average one-year decrease on newspaper spending: 8.5% Average % of total dollars that was spent on newspapers: 5.2% down 1.0%
Average percent of total dollars that was spent on Network TV: 16% Average one-year increase on Network TV spending: 0.0% (or nil, as we like to say during World Cup time.)
These are just some quick findings in one of Ad Age’s most in-depth reports of the year. Spend some time in the data yourself and you’ll find industry trends, marketer trends and a pretty complete picture of the state of flux that is media spending in 2009. See AdAge.com/datacenter to get access.

FIFA Has Kept Ambush Marketing Out of Stadiums, but It’s Welcome on the Web 

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — It took David Beckham, Snoop Dogg, Daft Punk and Noel Gallagher, but Adidas’s “Star Wars” spot finally broke the top 10 viral ads last week. It’s the first official World Cup marketer to make the top 10. Why is that news? Well, for a key sponsor of the World Cup, Adidas had been strangely absent from the online buzz, dominated by arch-rival and non-sponsor Nike, whose “Write the Future” campaign dominated in views and buzz. 

We’ve seen this as a pattern throughout the World Cup so far: non-sponsors outperforming sponsors in terms of online marketing around the event. There’s Nike over Adidas; Pepsi over Coke; Carlsberg over Budweiser. FIFA organizers are getting a lot of cooperation from South African officials to stop ambush marketing during the matches. Witness the removal of 36 Dutch fans in orange mini dresses from a game, for planning a stunt for non-sponsor Bavaria Beer. 

But FIFA, which earns 30% of its income from sponsorships, can’t do much about marketers capitalizing on World Cup excitement on the web (or TV, for that matter). This raises the question of what the future holds for big-money sponsorships around events. Non-sponsors are showing they can do as well or better without paying up for “official” status, especially if they have existing marketing relationships with the athletes themselves, as Nike and Pepsi do. 

Nike’s “Write the Future” held firm at No. 2 for again in its fourth consecutive week on the chart, while Adidas’ recreation of the “Star Wars” cantina scene broke in at No. 3 with a bit more than 2.5 million views. Pepsi’s World Cup ad came in at No. 4, its 14th week on the cart. 

No. 1 last week was a new entry in the form of branded entertainment for Cosmopolitan magazine and Nivea. Curious: Who’s the target audience for this spot? Men? Buyers of Nivea? Cosmo readers? For obvious reasons, we expect it to stick around for at least another week. 

Marketer Plans to Emulate Coach Maradona’s Promised Naked Victory Lap in Buenos Aires 

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — If Argentina wins the World Cup, Pepsi Cola plans to follow the example of Argentina’s coach Diego Maradona, who says he’ll celebrate by running around naked in Buenos Aires. 

Not to be outdone, Pepsi announced that the company’s soft drink bottles will be sold for a week in Argentina with no label if that country wins the soccer tournament. To illustrate what that would look like, Pepsi is running print ads this week from BBDO Argentina showing a Pepsi-shaped plastic bottle of dark liquid dressed in nothing but a blue label fastened to the neck of the bottle reading, “If the coach goes naked, we will, too. Pepsi promises.” 

Mr. Maradona, a frequently controversial former soccer star who is coaching his first World Cup team, apparently responded to a radio interviewer who asked how he would celebrate an Argentine victory by saying that he would strip and run naked around the Obelisk, a famous Buenos Aires landmark. 

That was enough to prompt BBDO Argentina to make a cheeky bid to grab attention for Pepsi during the World Cup. In the agency’s last campaign, Pepsi changed its name to Pecsi to reflect the way the brand’s name sounds when pronounced in Argentine-accented Spanish. 

Argentina isn’t tipped to win the World Cup, but the country isn’t a long shot, either. Brazil and Spain are considered the tournament’s favorites, but Argentina boasts star player Lionel Messi and the odds on Argentina emerging next month as the champion are about 6-1. Argentina has played only one game so far, an easy victory over Nigeria, and on Thursday morning faces a mediocre South Korean team, whose only standout player is Park Ji-Sung. (Mr. Park plays during the regular season for Manchester United, whose fans like to greet the South Korean player with the chant “He shoots, he scores, he eats Labradors.”) 

If Argentina wins, Pepsi is ready.