Google have all but conquered contextual-based advertising and are the clear leader in that area, however, they’ve yet to take the top spot in another area of online advertising: display advertising. However, the company does expect a bright future in this area, and are expecting to have a “very significant position” by 2008-2009.
Key to their success in this area is the acquisition of DoubleClick, which has been approved by US regulatory officials, and is expected to be has just now been approved by European Union officials any day now. Once finalized, Google will be able to push more aggressively in the display ad market and become much bigger players. They are, however, likely to experience some tough competition, especially if Microsoft is able to snap up rival Yahoo.
Once the DoubleClick acquisition has been finalized, Google will be its best position to date to make significant in-roads in the display ad marketplace.
Google has also had teams of engineers and sales people working on figuring out how to best monetize social networking sites. They believe that the traditional approaches just don’t tend to work as well with social networks, and insist that they have now figured out how to best handle advertising on these kinds of websites. This could be very important in monetizing the huge resource-hog known as YouTube, which not just a video site, but also a somewhat social experience.
According to Tim Armstrong, president of Google’s North American advertising and commerce, Google considers YouTube its “brightest light” for their display ad potential. He also went on to discuss how Google’s advertising platform will evolve to the point where eventually, they will not distinguish between search and display advertising – you’ll simply get the best advertising for your site.
