Google: the biggest advertising agency

It turns out that we know a little bit about advertising.” – Vic Gundotra, VP Engineering at Google

For the average person, online search and the Android OS immediately jump to mind when Google is mentioned. What many fail to grasp is the fact that more than anything, Google is an advertising agency. It gets all its money from advertisers. That’s why, when they are delivering a keynote centered on advertising, you should have an open ear.

Growth of Android

We have more than 160,000 of these things shipping globally every day.”
– Eric Schmdit, CEO of Google

The one single reason why Android OS is becoming an increasingly lucrative medium of advertising is the above statement by Eric Schmdit. With 160,000 new people getting their hands on an Android device every day, your target audience is growing by leaps and bounds.

The new advertising formats

The number of new advertising formats introduced by Google is humongous. You can have ads targeted locally, ads that allow users to call you with a single click, ads that play a video and various combinations of all these formats. You control which apps show your ads and which don’t. Google provides you so much control, we are sure there is a way to target a single person if you’d so like!

Future of advertising in apps

10 years from now, will you be sad if you did not get into mobile advertising today? You sure will be. – Karsten Weide, research vice president, Media and Entertainment on idc.com

Advertising within apps has only recently begun to gain momentum. The sole reason is that the technology behind this is still in its nascent stages. Apple and Google both had to make significant acquisitions in order to bring the service to the level at which it is today. This is an advantageous situation for you, since the field is still relatively empty. Contrast this to advertising on Google’s search results where the competition is fierce. Now is the perfect time to get your feet wet in mobile apps advertising.

Spending on mobile ads in 2010 is expected to touch $500 million. In comparison, global online advertising revenues were more than $17 billion in Q4 of 2009 alone. It’s evident you will have a easy time perfecting your strategies in this field right now.

Throw DoubleClick for Publishers in the mix

Double Click is one of my favorite advertising programs because it has impressive features for publishers not found elsewhere.
– brocation on imreportcard.com

There’s another great service that Google offers – DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP). It lets you target specific target audiences. Let’s not mix up DFP with advertising in Android apps however. So far, these services are totally different. However, DFP lets you target ads solely at Android users. So if you have a website based on Android or Android apps where you get a lot of visitors from Android devices, you’d do well to use to DFP to target those users specifically.