Three years ago I attended a seminar at Google’s Mountain View HQ in which Ruth Porat (Google CFO) spoke. What stuck with me most of all was her quote that Google still thinks of itself and behaves like an Early Stage Business.
This week at Google Marketing Live in San Francisco I’m pleased to see that positive ethos and quest for greatness is still very much alive. There’s no way this business is resting on its laurels. There was a slew of real innovations in advertising that we were privileged to see. There’s no way this giant is running short on ideas. Last year Google earned `$116 billion. Yet some analysts worry themselves that Amazon and Facebook (particularly Instagram) are becoming the new hot spots for marketers investments to gain online shoppers.
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Amazon, in particular, look like they will start to eat into the advertising market dominated until now by Google and Facebook. Google has combated this threat by finding even more ways for shoppers to buy and indeed for online retailers to spend. Coming soon, Google will offer targeted ads for retail products on Gmail, Google Images, YouTube mobile app and by no means least the voice-based digital assistant. Google aims to offer YouTube viewers a way to buy products during a video clip, while still watching it.
In travel, Google is combining its related products such as Google Flights, Hotel Search, the mobile Google Trips app and other features under a single landing page called ‘Trips’. This will let users plan their travel by searching for a destination to find options for hotels, hotels, travel guides, or holiday packages. Once you’ve booked your trip (even if you don’t book through the Google tool) you can use Trips to see all of the booking receipts to outline your travel itinerary, booking confirmations, and travel information and present them alongside weather reports on your specific travel dates.
There’s just loads more to report back on which my colleagues from Push will be doing over the coming days as we gather our thoughts on what has been another pivotal week in marketing.
