Google's quest to diversify from its search marketing cash cow (and inordinate slice of its total revenue at over 95%) is getting more and more obvious with each passing day.
One can predict just how serious Google is about something if it has produced a video around it. If that video seems more like an ad then you can bet that Google thinks this is the real deal. So it looks like display advertising is the next big thing for the Google advertising machine to ratchet up and show the rest of the world that despite its product diversity Google is not a one trick revenue pony.
Here's the video that is aimed at the agency world to tell them display with Google is the wave of the future (oops, poor choice of words considering the recent euthanizing of Google's Wave......my bad).
When Google fully integrated its DoubleClick unit with AdWords last year, the company set a goal of making display a $1 billion business. Deals, such as the one with Omnicom and the purchase of demand-side platform Invite Media have certainly helped it close in on that endeavor, especially as display advertising has reversed last year's declines and is continuing to grow.
Getting its success in display across is the major point of this ad effort. It clearly shows that despite the progress in display, that business requires more hand-holding as opposed to its search business, where Google remains the dominant player. In display, Google is big and getting bigger, but it's far from the only game in town.
The hidden 'gotcha' in that last quote is the oxymoron of Google 'hand-holding' clients. Google has never given anyone the customer service "warm fuzzies" but hopefully with the integration of DoubleClick it has started to understand that the "Google engineer builds and they will come and they will like it just the way we provide it and they can rot on the vine if they have a question" approach is so 2009.
Call me a skeptic (I dare you but I can tell you that you would not be the first) but I think that Google has further to go in their concept of customer contact and service than they do in their display advertising area. That's my take.
Of course, to prove that Google is not very comfortable straying too far from their roots if you want to see the above video it's part of the Adwords section of Google.com (http://www.google.com/adwords/watchthisspace/ to be exact).
I suspect Google will be very successful eventually in this area. That success, however, will likely be due more to its ability to start to truly interact and support its customers of all sizes than anything else. People know Google can do most anything it wants. It's just getting what you, the customer, wants can be the tough part.
What's your take?