Google Getting Aggressive with Advertising

It's Not Just About Adwords Anymore

Google is trying to get advertising agencies to warm up to it after years of not being their favorite entity. After all, think of all the marketing dollars spent on search engine advertising (and SEO campaigns for that matter) that agencies missed out on because of a certain search giant.

Google Shows Off

Stephanie Clifford at the New York Times writes about Google invading the offices of advertising agency Leo Burnett back in July, setting up some kind of mini-carnival of sorts to show off their advertising technology. It seems that the company wants to recruit agencies to use its tools, but some of these agencies believe Google has ulterior motives.

"As Google begins trying to sell television, radio and print advertising and creates tools for buying and planning media campaigns, some advertising executives and academics say that the company is working with the agencies in order to eventually displace them," writes Clifford.

Aggressive Advertising

It's not unreasonable to suspect that Google has its own best interests in mind. Why wouldn't it? The company does seem to be working its way further into the advertising world more aggressively than ever. For example, they're talking about not even waiting for Federal approval before going forward with their ad deal with Yahoo.

That's being investigated as a possible antitrust issue. Imagine if Google was able to phase out ad agencies. I don't anticipate that happening anytime soon, however. Google is big, and it has a lot of pull, but it's not everything. It's a notion that even Google itself dismisses.

"I don’t see how we would be able to actually provide a better customer experience to an individual client than an agency can today," says Google Vice President for North American ad sales, Penry Price. "There’s no way we could actually line up behind one customer and offer the services and information that an agency can today."

A Lot of Ads in Google's Future

Don't mark the extinction of agencies yet, but there is no question that Google is getting a lot bigger in its advertising britches these days. You got YouTube ads starting to come out, RSS ads in Feedburner, and don't forget that DoubleClick aquisition. If that Yahoo! deal goes through unscathed, that's going to be one big chunk of the advertising market that's going to get even bigger.