The World is full of Interesting Things...

It's hard to do this presentation from Google Creative Labs justice in words.

Suffice to say that there is something there for everyone and every slide's a winner. We've featured a few of these items in these pages previously but as a roundup of all that's been cool online and off in the last six months this is hard to beat.

It takes a wee bit to load but my goodness it's worth it.

Google predictions to 2015

Google have been making some predictions on their blog:

1. 50 percent of ad campaigns will include video ads bought on a cost-per-view basis (that means that the user will choose whether to watch the ad or not, and the advertiser will only pay if the user watches). That’s up from very little today.

2. Today, advertisers are starting to deliver ads that are tailored to particular audiences. Many are using real-time bidding technology, so that they can bid on the ad space that they think is most valuable. In 2015, 50 percent of these ads will be bought using this real-time technology.

3. With smartphone growth skyrocketing, mobile is going be the number one screen through which users engage with advertisers’ digital brands.

4. Today, the “click” is the most important way that advertisers measure their display ad campaigns, but it’s not always the best measure—especially if an ad campaign is designed to boost things like brand awareness or recall. With new measurement technologies emerging, in five years, there will be five metrics that advertisers commonly regard as more important than the click.

5. Just like most news articles on the web today can be commented on, shared, discussed, subscribed to and recommended, in 2015, 75 percent of ads on the web will be “social” in nature—across dozens of formats, sites and social communities.

6. Rich media formats work. They enable great creativity and interaction between users and advertisers, but today they only represent about 6 percent of total display ad impressions. Rich media formats will increase to 50 percent, for brand-building ad campaigns.

7. All the investments that are making display advertising smarter and sexier will help publishers increase their revenues. Display advertising is going to grow to a $50 billion industry in five years.

Think with Google

Hot on the heels of a wave goodbye here comes a lovely simple YouTube channel. Think with Google. Business in Bites.

http://www.youtube.com/think

Wave Goodbye to Google Wave

You may remember the initial fanfare surrounding the launch of Google Wave? "What would email look like if it was invented today"?

Here's a short (10 mins) overview from the Google Wave team, created after a bit of a backlash on the original 80 minute presentation used to launch the product!



As a company Google have always been pretty synonymous with making things simple for us as consumers, and simplicity we like! A product from the search giant which takes a minimum of 10 minutes to explain..... grand and interesting sure, simple enough to drive behavioural change, sadly not.

A race across the internet

We think this is a pretty clever way of showing off Google Chrome

We managed a pretty dismal 3:04 minutes. How fast can you get from one end of the internet to the other?

Google TV in action

Soon the whole world will be ad-served!

More from us on Google TV here.

Google TV

Couch Potatoes and Technology nerds around the world rejoiced this week, whilst health campaigners winced at the thought of a new generation of children growing up thinking exercise is something only done on QVC abs toning demos.

As news of Google’s launch into the TV market with an Internet enabled TV, filtered through to TV and Online planners, a decade long media civil war looks like it might draw to a ceasefire; “working together” might actually be the new buzz words rather than “smoke and mirrors media” or “pensioner programming”.

Google’s new venture with Sony and electronics firms Logitech and Intel is clearly an attempt to merge the growing online market with the 49 billion pounds of TV advertising revenue currently the province of TV networks.

The new platform means that online display advertisements will be able to reach users in the comfort of their armchairs, reaching a more traditionally social audience than the solitary internet user. The new technology will also have the power to, for the first time; serve user specific advertising much like the online sister of the TV i.e. by Age, Location and time of day.

The new TV, which allows users to switch between watching films and surfing the net, has been labelled “the biggest improvement to television since colour” a phrase used as much in the TV market as “best thing since sliced bread” was used since bakers started getting smart.

Whilst sliced bread is now the norm, the TV technology market is ever evolving. In recent years, other previous “biggest improvements since colour” have been digital, HD and 3D. With the merger of TV and Internet from the same comfy sofa the future of combined media is looking positive.

We don’t want you to get ahead of yourselves and start thinking you can order your weekly shop or update your gardening blog from your sofa however (unless you're already doing that from your laptop). Realistically Google TV will only allow customers to access Facebook and watch films on YouTube initially.
In the past competitors have had limited success trying to merge the internet and TV, but Google may have cracked it, creating 'companion boxes' and remote controllers that allow users to switch between the two at the flick of a switch. A special wireless keyboard will also be provided in order to keep the comfy man firmly in his chair.

The TV is expected to go on sale in the “home of convenience” (i.e. America) this autumn before arriving in Britain next year. As yet the price has not yet been set; however, expect this not to come cheap.

Google leaves China?

Well, kind of...

After 4 years of their controversial self-censored presence in China, Google is finally pulling the plug on it's .cn search operation. Following allegedly official Chinese government hacking attempts on the g-mail accounts of Chinese dissidents Google has threatened to leave China. Note this affects only their search business not their other commercial interests in China i.e. Doubleclick, R&D, sales and content.

This doesn't mean a complete withdrawal of service to Chinese browsers however as there is a temporary re-direct in place from the .cn domain to the Hong Kong based Google site. Cynics might claim that this is a PR driven action from Google as they pull back their investment from a market they have failed to penetrate as effectively as they have elsewhere - it's worth noting that Bing have stepped right into the gap Google have left behind - but it could just signal a strategic shift for the business.

Augmented Reality

We're big fans of TED. This talk from Pranav Mistry at TEDIndia last November shows the potential of his "sixth sense" technology which links the physical and digital worlds. It got us on the hunt for more Augmented Reality. While perhaps not quite as impressive as Mistry's Sixth Sense, the following are available right now:

Layar: an Android app that overlays information onto your phone's screen when you point the camera at something.

We've posted about this before on this blog but Google Goggles is another Android app that pulls up data/extra info on something if you take a photo of it (an example shows review scores for a book, similar to the SixthSense demo).

Again, something we've blogged about previously but QR codes have been popular in Asia for a while but not really caught on here so much (although some magazines have used them in recent special "AR" issues). The Weather Channel in the US has started putting QR codes on-screen, so you can take a photo of it on your phone and it sends you to a page to download a weather app directly

Google Plans to monetise Street-View

Interesting news from Google (reported at ReadWriteWeb), who have just been granted a patent for a new piece of technology based around Google street-view.

In essence the technology they have developed uses augmented reality to allow advertisers to advertise on signs and billboards that appear on street-view. This is an interesting way to monetise street-view but there is obvious potential for problems as Google at present are planning to sell the space using a bidding system in much the same way as they do through search.

What if a billboard owned by a theatre is bid on by a competitor who then uses it to advertise a rival show?  Would the theatre have the right to complain / sue? Surely that the owners of the billboards should be due a share of the revenue, a process that could prove very difficult to implement?

What do you think?

Google Goggles

In the beginning there was search.

Then it took to the streets when we could search from our mobiles.

Then we ejoyed the randomness of voice-search on our iPhones.

Now Google goes one step further with the arrival of Google Goggles on the Android platform.

Take a picture with your mobile phone camera and Google will use this to search for relevant content. It's far from perfect yet but we can see this going far.

After all, a picture paints a thousand words.

News Corp or News Corpse?

After a long late summer (it was summer wasn't it?) layoff we're back. Sorry for the hiatus but we've been immersed in all sorts of interesting stuff. More of which to follow.

First off though, Rupert Murdoch's alleged deal with Microsoft to "de-index" News Corp content from Google in favour of an exclusive paid-content deal with Bing.

Does this set the scene for a search enginge battle which provides a ray of light for the ailing newspaper industry. Some things worth thinking about:

Will the extra money News Corp gets from Microsoft outweigh the lost traffic from Google?
Can News Corp afford to jeopardize it's online share of voice?
Is this a sustainable business model for Microsoft?
Will searchers even notice the difference if Google doesn't list News Corp content?
If this battle ensures, what does it mean for the future of search?

Some seemingly well informed comment from Business Week here:

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/nov2009/tc20091124_203544.htm

Interested to hear your views.

Has Google Chrome really been built with the user in mind?

This month Google’s shiny new browser – Google Chrome – hit the e-shelves. It promises to make the web “faster, safer and easier” and has been “designed with the user in mind”. Google has taken into account our love of media-rich content and web-based applications and created a browser that is altogether better equipped to meet the needs of the Web 3.0 user.

But is it any good, we hear you cry. Well, it loads quickly; it offers extra protection against spyware and malware; it offers a privacy mode; it can stream video without slowing down other windows, and it does all of this much faster than the competition. So far, so good.

But surely the good folks at Google aren’t so selfless as to have created this little beauty for the good of their health? What’s in it for them? Advertising is how Google makes its money, so let’s take a closer look at how they have designed a browser with profit as much as the user in mind.

1.Chrome doesn’t enable you to block advertising and will not make life easy for those wanting to browse the internet without bumping into Google’s ads everywhere. MediaCom rating: 5Star Neat!

2.Google’s privacy mode “Incognito” removes all evidence a user visited this or that site and, more importantly, viewed this or that ad. Advertisers will likely pay more simply because they will be showing the same ads to the same users, where otherwise frequency caps could prevent this from happening. And as middleman between advertisers and publishers, Google will profit. MediaCom rating: 1Star Cheeky!

3.Studying the detail of the EULA (End User Licence Agreement), it would appear that the browser itself will likely be used as an advertising platform in the future, pushing ads at you right in your browser. MediaCom rating: 5Star Nice opportunity!

4.Chrome ‘conceals’ pop-ups, it doesn’t block them. Pop-ups are actually loaded but minimised. This is typically a billable event, even though the ads won't be seen unless users choose to maximize the pop-up. Consequently, using Chrome may result in billings to advertisers for pop-ups that were never viewed. MediaCom rating: 1Star Ouch!

5.Chrome’s combined URL address and search boxes will allow Google to skew searches towards the links and terms Google suggests, thereby making popular keywords more expensive. MediaCom rating: 3Star Tighter targeting?

If widely adopted, Chrome is likely to have a significant impact on Internet advertising (some beneficial to advertisers, some not) and of course make Google even more profitable. But built with the user in mind? We're not so sure.