With many wondering how long the online ad strategy can grow for Google (GOOG), and the announcement by Yahoo (YHOO) that ad sales have dropped, Google has partnered with Goodby, Silverstein & Partners in San Francisco, to work with the Saturn division of General Motors to produce an advertising campaign using some of the tools unique to the Internet.
Google understands that its standard text ads business will be able to grow for only so long before it starts to level off. As we talked about here recently, Yahoo, in their mostly online display advertising (banner ads), were hit hard because they hadn't diversified much and as a result have paid the price. Google is trying to avoid the same results.
Tim Armstrong, vice president for advertising sales at Google said, “We’ve been out there meeting with a lot of agencies and clients so they understand at a brand level, at a creative level, at a media-planning level, how they can use the palette we have.”
Choosing some of their best selling Saturn dealerships in the six cities of Raleigh, N.C.; Buffalo; Dallas; Harrisburg, Pa.; Indianapolis; and Las Vegas, they are giving the campaign a good look and hope for success on all participants in the experiment.
The ad itself is fun to interact with as after you click on the banner ad, a look at the earth from a satellite view is shown. From there you almost immediately zoom in to the local dealership. Then the doors of the building swing open and the general manager of the dealership comes out and introduces a short commercial of the Aura.
The manager then returns and while standing beside the Aura tells you about several options you can now take to interact with the commercial. You can spin the car around 360 degrees, print out a map of directions to the showroom, look at the car engine or visit the corporate Web site.
Google has a lot to gain if this works out for them as Goodby represents a number of other big clients such as Comcast, Frito-Lay, Anheuser-Busch, and Motorola, among others. If they can take this and help to move some cars for General Motors in the midst of their industry slump, they will probably be able to make a deal with anyone across the spectrum.
If you think they're big now, wait to see what happens if they're successful with this.
The lesson for us is to consider all the strengths that the Internet advertising model offers. Whether we're doing the marketing or the recipient of ads, we have to understand that this is going to be a growing trend for a long time.
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