Google Inside

Earlier this week on Monday, I attended an advertising meetup that was being hosted at Google NYC. A lot of people felt it was a sales pitch for Google products, but I had other thoughts. Since I author this site, I felt it was actually informative and there were some really interesting things touched on.

Here is a small recap of the event with some pictures, courtesy of Tamar.

Date: Monday, Jan. 28th, 2008

Moderated by Jeff Grill - VP, Marketing/Mimeo.com

Sponsored by Mimeo.com

• Featured Panelists

• Long Ellis - Head of Sales, Television #jump
• Joseph Anastasi - Team Manager Audio East #jump
• Sarah Carberry - Team Manager Consumer Packaged Goods #jump
• Derek Kuhl - Head of Agency Relations #jump
• Tiffany Shen Miller - Account Executive Print Ads #jump

I’m going to overview some primary points I felt were important from the event.

Long Ellis - Head of Sales, Television

• The marketplace is ready
• The digital platform for buy and delivering television ads in a more effective way is in process
• Google launched the platform through the partnership with EchoStar back in May 2007
• The advertising platform spans over 94 different television networks
• Since May 2007, around 200 advertisers are currently using the platform
• Why is it successful? Because the marketplace and industry are ready for it
• Why is it successful? Analytics predictions make ROI possible
• Millions of set-top boxes make measuring the long tail effect of television ads possible
• Difference? Many companies don’t buy television ads because they don’t know the effects of long tail, but these set-top boxes will provide that capability
• Second-by-second measurements via these set-top boxes giving Google the ability to know how long an ad is seen for and if the user watches the whole ad, or changes the channel (and when)
• You only pay for impressions (people actually viewing your ads)
• If you buy prime time positioning, you don’t need to buy morning, etc
• You can re-allocate funds on a daily basis, if necessary (in case there is a market change and you need to react to it)
• Google is looking to strike up a deal with Nielsen ratings as part of their analytics
• Auctions: Within 3 weeks, you will be able to bid for “programs,” for example: bidding for advertising for the show CSI, or maybe 24, or something of that nature
• Auctions: Winning bid pays the second highest price, not what they bid

Joseph Anastasi - Team Manager Audio East

• There are over 1,600 stations on our network
• Google created a digital connection to these radio stations, dating back to April 2007
• Most recent partnership is with ClearChannel Communications
• The radio portion of AdWords has great scalability
• 100% US coverage through ClearChannel and its partners
• Real-time reporting
• You can view delivery of ads, seconds after it runs
• You can change copy within 24 hours
• There is an ROI initiative taking place, ROI will be baked in soon

Sarah Carberry - Team Manager Consumer Packaged Goods

• YouTube, 6th largest destination on the web
• The “connective tissue” is video, publishing, and sharing
• There are…57 million uniques per month
• There are…100s of millions of videos viewed daily
• There are…100s of thousands of videos uploaded daily
• YouTube is user-generated content just from the younger generation. True or False? False.
• The average age of a YouTube user is 35+
• YouChoose has become the 2008 platform of choice for the elections
• Premium networks are moving their content to YouTube to reach a wider audience, globally. (examples: CBS, CNN, ABC, and Oprah)

Heinz Ketchup Partnership w/ Google & YouTube - Case Study

• Product Packaging
• YouTube display
• AdWords Search
• Google Site Targeting
• YouTube Display
• TV Ads
• Campaign Summary
• 80,000 hours spent watching
• 4,000 different entries
• 125,000+ hours with brand interaction
• 54,000 views /day
• 10.1 million views since launch

Tiffany Shen Miller - Account Executive Print Ads

• Working on “making ads sexier”
• Working to create a single web interface to be able to search and find inventory across a lot of publications
• The ability to eliminate rate cards
• Plan and buy locally and nationally targeted campaigns
• Working on diversity with print ads
• Our Goal: incorporate Google Analytics, making things “trackable” and measurable

Maybe Tiffany will eventually have something to say on that rumor about Google buying out The New York Times.

Overall, the event was great. I had a good time meeting some of the panelists. This is a text recap of the event, but if you’re looking for video coverage, please check out Allen’s record of the night. He has full video coverage of the event over at CenterNetworks.com.