Billboards by Goooogle

Fellow Internet enthusiast & head of the online travel meta search engine http://www.zoomtra.com/ - Vikas, brought to my notice ( through a comment on my previous post's reference to Google's usage of mass media to market it's products ) this interesting link of a blogpost on Google using OOH media to promote it's local voice search offering. The post captures an interesting scenario:

"Google is interested in expanding into all forms of advertising, including the $7 billion outdoor market -- billboards, that is. Perhaps it's purchased some billboard space, in the hopes of using its dynamic, auction-based ad-selling system to resell it at a profit. Until it finds buyers, it may be using the billboards to promote its own services"

You never know - next revolution in advertising could be "Billboards by Goooogle" !

Thanks Vikas.

Read complete post here.

User Generated Advertising

Today, while checking my mail @ Gmail I noticed a video link posted on the home page. I am sure every one logging on through this page would have noticed it. Google's Home Page and Gmail's Home Page are any ways the most premium real estate properties available on the Internet and we are all so used to see the clean white interface that any deviation from normal can't get unnoticed!

Coming to the video now, it's an interesting collage of videos submitted by users across the globe in response to Google's Call for Videos on "How an email message travel across the globe". It's an interesting execution hinting upon the way email in general and Gmail in particular is connecting the world. It also made me think that it might give a talking point to the early Gmail bashers on the privacy issue - in a way the ad shows the message passing through so many hands ! Just another way to look at it for the folks who may still believe in this school of thought.

Linking this back to my last post on the importance of creating time - this one is the latest add on to the "perfect examples" list. More than 3.5 Million Users have already seen it ! Makes me wonder - Will Google ever need any sort of "so called" mass media !?

Some Related Links:
Link to the final collaborative video page

Also, check out all the responses from which the final video is made here

Buying Time to Creating Time

As a group of passionate believers of Internet media we guys at Quasar keep discussing the importance of creating time over buying time ! If you think of it that's where Internet as a media has made a difference and can be differentiated rationally over other mediums of communication. The battle of eyeballs & clutter end with this argument - Internet is the only medium which lets you buy time from the audience. That means how well & for how long I can engage my audience on my website - all the time they spend on your site seeing demos, reading brochures, watching videos is the time you have not paid for - You only paid to get this user on to your website. In India, we still don't see brands realizing the importance of creating time with their customers. Across the globe kick-ass videos are being produced & released specifically for the Internet - BMW pioneered this with their "The Hire" Film Series which crossed 100 Million Views! BMW only incurred the production cost and then created time from their audience - That's the power of Internet - Here the media can also be created !

Web : The Way I want it !

It's been some time that I came across creating totally customized web pages for yourself ( the likes of igoogle ) but never found a fancy for any ! The idea of getting only the information that I want ( and nothing more ) along with some cool widgets always fascinated me but somehow I couldn't stick for more than 2-3 days on any of these even after spending some valuable time customizing the feeds and widgets.

It was only recently that one of my "more" tech savvy friend - Satish, introduced me to Net Vibes. Trust me, it has made my quest for relevant information easier. I loved the simplicity of presentation & the fact that you can customize the site to the minutest possible detail - they haven't even put their logo on your customized page ! Now, I no longer have to hop from site to site looking for information that I want rather than the information that I am shown.

But, if such will be the form of the websites users will like to visit ( or rather create for themselves ) in future then what will the form of online advertising they will consume? As a consumer I would love to get Hot Deals on my favorite brands as RSS feeds within this page (remember Google's mantra to success was to treat advertising as a commercial information which consumers are looking for ) or put up a cool widget like LIVE Cricket or Tennis Scores on my customized web page - Both give a very good advertising or branding opportunity !



I also see a huge potential in the way advertisers are integrating applications in "Facebook" - Flixster's Movie Rating Application or Trip Advisor's Travel Map Application - to me that's the perfect way of riding on the social media wave as treating social networking sites like just another "eyeball" play is not the smartest thing to do. You need to be a part of them to get noticed and thus make a difference to the community at large!