Google announced on it’s official blog at the end of last week that it was rolling out the end product of it’s incorporation with DoubleClick, an acquisition that Google made 18 months ago.
Google display ads will complement the now familiar text ads that appear alongside Google’s search engine results, to display online billboards and video and interactive advertising.
The official Google blog explains that this has been in the works since Google purchased DoubleClick a year and a half ago, and that their intention is to effectively increase the size of the display ad market.
Display advertising has, so far, not done nearly as well as the smaller, less intrusive text adverts which have been appearing next to search engine results for a long time now.
A Fresh Start For Display
According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau, search engine advertising in the US alone last year totalled some US$10 Billion. Display adverting on the other hand, came to around US$7.5 Billion.
According to Neil Mohan, Google VP of Product Marketing, “The display market today is probably not really living up to its full potential.”
Google is banking on being able to sell more display ads, and counting on the experience they have in making technology simple and easy to use. The same advantages that allowed them to make their search advertising so profitable.
“We are going to be bringing a lot of the know-how and a lot of the efficiencies of the search market to the art of display,” Mohan said.
Growing Google Advertising
Although some have posited that this step represents a new threat to Yahoo, which has so far enjoyed a large part of the display advertising market, Yahoo itself does not seem too worried. According to Frank Weishaupt, Yahoo’s Vice President of North American marketplaces, they don’t expect Google to dominate the display advertising market the way they have with search engine advertising.
“We fully expect the display market to be fragmented and for there to be other exchanges,” he said. “We welcome these exchanges, and look forward to working with them and integrating with them for our partners.”
Visit the Google Blog for more about how Google intends to grow display advertising.