"The Acceleration Of Everything"
March 21, 2011 • Article by Dan Fallon
This was the slightly chilling /thrilling theme of Google’s UK agency conference at Google’s London HQ last week. Google runs these “Insight” conferences every 6 months or so for their partner agencies. They keep us up to speed with developments in Google’s world and allow agencies to enjoy some free “love” from Google’s account teams.
The great & the good from Google Europe each gave a 30 minute talk followed by a Q&A. If you are interested in what any of them had to say then we have the presentations if you ask nicely.
Speakers included Mark Howe – Google’s Europe MD (who I last saw selling TV airtime for IDS 12 years ago!), Shovo Saha – Google Director of FMCG, Andy Smith – Google Head of Mobile, Bruce Daisley – Head of YouTube & Display, Biren Kalaria – Google Display Manager & Peter Fitzgerald – Google Retail Dirrector
The presentations were uniformly excellent as you’d expect from the calibre of the speakers. Key sound bites that made it onto my notepad in no particular order are as follows:
- The global advertising market is currently worth $500bn and is 15% digital. By 2020 Google expect it to be worth $1000bn and to be 50% digital
- UK web enabled SMEs grow 4x faster than non-web enabled SMEs
- Google delivers results for 4bn searches per day
- 300k android handsets are enabled every day (hence Google’s obsession with mobile search)
- Google’s 5Bs advice for clients on developing digital presence (I liked these as a mantra)
- Be found
- Be relevant
- Be engaging
- Be commercial
- Be accountable
- 90% of purchases are offline at present but 40% begin online
- “The biggest gift of the internet is the ability to be proven wrong fast” Avinash Kaushik, Google’s Analytics Evangelist (I’m a big fan of fast testing & research so approve of this)
- PPC accounts that are optimised for mobile get 43% more conversions, 80% higher CTR & 15% lower CPA than when the mobile search is treated exactly like desktop search
- Remarketing is going to get extremely interesting later this year with a blizzard of targeting & profiling options coming out from Google across the next few months – it you haven’t already set up retargeting on your website then do so!
- 80% of Google’s larger advertisers do not yet have a mobile enabled site
Sadly although the seminar sessions were great the Search Star team won no prizes! At past conferences we have been unusually good at winning Android handsets & other goodies. I came home empty handed bar the usual collection of A5 spiral bound Google branded notebooks that my family love & cost a small fortune in Paperchase.
Please get in touch with any questions or if you fancy talking search with an agency that really knows its stuff.