Google Takes A Dip In The Shallow End

Below the fold on the front page of Saturday’s Wall Street Journal, Google laid out its plans for a major expansion of its advertising business. In the way Google conquered the online world with Adwords and Adsense, the company hopes to do the same with television, and to a lesser extent, radio (not working so well) and print.

And there’s no need waiting for them to make a grand entrance into either industry. No need to wait for a big red ribbon to be cut with similarly enlarged scissors. Google’s already started.

Right now, Google is just sampling the waters with its television ads, as it continues to do with its print and radio ventures. The test tube currently undergoing analysis is Concord, a North Californian town near the famed Bay Area. The logic for staying small for now is clear, so we won’t go into that.

What we will tear apart is the bigger picture. Currently, Google is doubling its staff based almost entirely on its $20+ billion online advertising returns. The American television advertising market weighs in at over 250% that number. That doesn’t make Google’s online-based revenue chump change, by any means. In all fairness, it shows that Mountain View’s finest is doing very well for itself, particularly as its ad model has been in existence for a decade or less.

Plus, Google’s growing. It won’t grow at the rate it is managing to continue with for much longer, but we’re sure you’ll agree that $20 billion annually (and counting) is still very, very impressive.

So, how are Google’s TV ads going to stack up with its tried and true textalicious bunch? We presume that if all goes well, they'll amass many more billions for the coffers. We all know that with print and radio, we can’t click links to bring us to those “relevant” sites and merchants (Unless it’s Internet radio, but that’s still an incredibly small market compared to traditional band-based transmissions, so it’s not worth bothering with, at least on a Google-like scale. Well, it wouldn’t hurt Larry and Sergey to get in while the industry is still taking baby steps, so maybe we’ll hold on of any judgment about such a move for now. Hey, they may help save it from that evil subset of the Library of Congress. That’d be good.).

Television would have to be interactive. Google should take this time while this new move is on an ultra-small scale and experiment ‘til the cows come home. Segment a select house of servers and give depth to the ads it presents – i.e., more information on drugs, the companies behind the drugs, or the cost of popular flights at that precise moment. Stuff like that. These ideas are very young, but deserve attention nonetheless. Google would do right to take big risks and try to force an old business to think new again – while it comes out on top, of course.