Google India has attempted interesting things over the last few months – right from Internet Bus Project to the apptitude challenge and even launching an aggressive print/billboard campaign for it’s sms search service.
And now, Google is advertising search in city supplements,as spottedby Vibhushan.
VIbhushan shares some of his perspective on Google’s print media campaign
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I saw a quarter-page advertisement from Google in ‘Nagpur Times’ (city supplement of Nagpur edition of The Times of India). It had a message “Take off to exciting destinations. Keep your airfare on ground.” and asked readers to search on internet to find cheap airfares and hotels. It has a screen shot of Google search box with query “Cheap tickets Goa”.
I was amazed on seeing direct print advertising from Google, and wanted to Tweet about it, so I checked online edition of TOI, but sadly TOI does not have Nagpur edition online. I checked city supplements from other cities to see if this is nationwide campaign from Google, but could find only this ad in Ahmedabad city supplement (of the cities edition available online). However the tag line there was different. In Ahmedabad city edition, the ad carried message “How to remove the excess weight from your airfare”. And the search query in this ad was “Cheap tickets Kerala”.
My observations on these are:
· Advertisement is about searching on internet, and not on Google. Looks like Google believes that if anyone from these tier II cities (in terms of internet penetration) search on internet, it will be on Google only!
· While the message in Nagpur is about cheaper airfares, that in Ahmedabad is about reducing the baggage weight. Also the destination in the search query change per city. Google has some smart brains designing these campaigns J
· What makes Google go into print advertisement in India, that too in such a targeted fashion that it has different communication message in different cities? Google has often said that for it to grow in emerging markets like India, it will have to grow the market; and may be it believes cities like Nagpur and Ahmedabad offer the right promise for them
· And lastly, when Google believes that it makes sense in advertising about their services in a city like Nagpur, our own desi Time of India thinks otherwise, and does not care to have Nagpur edition online (wonder what extra cost they will incur to have all their editions online!)
Google has never advertised itself, especially on any of the mass media channels. The TVC for Chrome browser in Japan created quite a buzz about Google selling itself on mass medium. It would be interesting to see if this shift towards advertising on mass media is a temporary one or if Google has some totally different plans for Indian market.
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What’s your take on these campaigns? Should other Internet companies take a leaf out of Google’s campaign (and stop wasting money in senseless campaigns)
About the author - Ashish Sinha is a Startup Mentor/Product Strategy Coach, and the founder/chief editor of pluGGd.in.
He has launched/managed couple of products (consumer as well as enterprise) in US and India, and now consults with startups/small businesses on their product/media strategy. He can be reached at: ashish (at) pluGGd.in [+91 98452 06443]30 Responses to "Google goes offline – Launches Print Campaigns to Promote Search"
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Personally, the bigger message I’m reading out of this is that in India, the web story needs to connect to non-internet-based interfaces too! Google doing this has surely got to be the biggest admission of them all…
I agree with Sameer. Yahoo India has been doing it a lot. You can see Yahoo India Search hoardings on cricket grounds.
Don’t remember about MSN though!
The ads are there in Jaipur edition also. and each day there is a different message / tagline. Frankly, was quite surprised to see a print ad from Google.
Travel is the only vertical that has seen any ecommerce success in India
=> OTAs are the only advertisers that are willing to pay more for a click as the ad spend is actually cost of customer acquisition.
=> OTAs willing to pay more per click
=> RPM (revenue per impression) generated from OTA ads is much higher than other verticals
=> Google wants to increase travel related queries and hence, the campaign (if you notice they are only promoting travel)
[...] to PluGGd.in – who we can also credit for taking the picture of the ad – this isn’t exactly the first time [...]
[...] to PluGGd.in – who we can also credit for taking the picture of the ad – this isn’t exactly the first time [...]
[...] to PluGGd.in – who we can plus credit for taking the picture of the ad – that isn’t precisely the first [...]
[...] to PluGGd.in – who we can also credit for taking the picture of the ad – this isn’t exactly [...]
[...] to PluGGd.in – who we can also credit for taking the picture of the ad – this isn’t exactly the first time [...]
[...] to PluGGd.in – who we can also credit for taking the picture of the ad – this isn’t exactly [...]
[...] to PluGGd.in – who we can also credit for taking the picture of the ad – this isn’t exactly the first time [...]
[...] to PluGGd.in – who we can also credit for taking the picture of the ad – this isn’t exactly [...]
[...] to PluGGd.in – who we can also credit for taking the picture of the ad – this isn’t exactly [...]
[...] SiteMap July 3, 20097:22 am Google India print media campaign in Time of India (TOI) Google India, apparently ordered some quarter-page advertisements to appear in a variety of city supplements of The Times Of India, leading English-news daily in the country. “I saw a quarter-page advertisement from Google in ‘Nagpur Times’ (city supplement of TOI). It had a message “Take off to exciting destinations. Keep your airfare on ground.” It has a screen shot of Google search box with query “Cheap tickets Goa”. However the tag line there was different in Ahmedabad city edition, the message: “How to remove the excess weight from your airfare”. And the search query in this ad was “Cheap tickets Kerala”,” reports PluGGd. [...]
[...] to PluGGd.in – who we can also credit for taking the picture of the ad – this isn’t exactly [...]
[...] to PluGGd.in – who we can also credit for taking the picture of the ad – this isn’t exactly the [...]
[...] to PluGGd.in – who we can also credit for taking the picture of the ad – this isn’t exactly [...]
[...] to PluGGd.in – who we can also credit for taking the picture of the ad – this isn’t exactly [...]
Wow, this post is techcrunched and what not you got a bunch of backlinks
Congrats
However, @ Techcrunch its patehrtic to see educated Indians cribbing against each other. Why do peoplpe have to throw their opinions like no one is listening? I think we are pretty cool country with our own set of good and bad. Why can’t we see that its Google who had to think differently in our country? [:(] I am not feeling good about the way discussions happened on TC against the post…:(
Agree with that pain of urs.. The commentors at Techcrunch are rude and harsh and mostly filled with American pride(or say fanatism?).. they can’t bear chinese, thy can’t bear african, they can’t bear asian.. they jsut want TC to be a silicon valley startup news site
[...] has written about Google launching offline Newspaper print campaign to promote search. Incidentally, it was [...]
[...] sceptici, site-ul Plugged.in are chiar si o fotografie a reclamei din ziar. var [...]
Wow! the first two insights are real eye opener!
I am really impressed by authors insightful thinking.
my bad. “Observations” & not insights. Same point though.
[...] to PluGGd.in – who we can also credit for taking the picture of the ad – this isn’t exactly the [...]
google is surely trying to reach as far as possible. they really do give great service to its users.
i am a great fan of google and almost all its products and services.
go google go… wish you the best.
While the theme might be the advantage of the internet , i dont buy your point that people will go elsewhere to search because Google has not specefically said “Come to us” ,sure they might , but google has displayed its logo rather prominently and i think thats sufficient
[...] India recently launched ads in internet and local newspapers across 10 Indian cities, to promote awareness and benefits of [...]
BTW, i have always wondered why all search results are not displayed?
Eg: I tried a search for “Prince Mohan”. The first page says showing 1-10 of 813000 results.
By the time I am on the 200-210 result page, the total count has come down to 808000.
And keeps decreasing such that when i am on the 99th page the total results have come down to: you wont beleive this :991 – 1000 of 804,000 for prince mohan – 0.49 sec.
There are no more results displayed except a disclaimer: In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the ones already displayed. If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included.
Googles no better: it shows 761 results of 328000 to 329000 results. Whats a 1000 in Xmillion?
Go figure?