eMarketing Trends|Verbal Acrobatics & Graphic Gymnastics

Even though we live in a fast paced and virtual world we are still very limited in our way of thinking in order to retrieve and obtain information. I just had the pleasure of attending a presentation by Stafford Masie from Google South Africa at the Lowe Bull Group office in Johannesburg. I was not the only one, but all of us were equally blown away by what Google actually has to offers its users, Advertisers and individuals in the Media world.

I have to mention that longtail previously invited Stafford to speak on Google’s involvement in South Africa at the Johannesburg Stock Exchange which I was not able to attend, so the following are my impressions taken from his latest presentation. This is in the particular order of randomness.

Don’t think only ‘search‘ when you see Google – think BIGGER, much BIGGER. Google are set on bringing information straight to your doorstep, be it on your computer or your cell phone. Relevant content, images and soon also maps for SA. Interesting enough Google has the biggest datacenter in the world – 14 times the size of NASA.

Some interesting stats and notes:

• Information is more accessible on mobile phones
• 1 in 6 searches done on the Internet are done on mobile phones.
• South Africa ranks as 3rd largest in query volume behind Japan and India being 1^st and 2^nd respectively.
• Google recently launched Google mobile ads which functions on their motto of ‘Moment of Relevance’ so you don’t have to scroll through tedious pages of content before finding what you are looking for.
• We are the 4^th country in the world to get mobile universal search.
• There are more mobile phones in the world than tv, pc’s and credit cards combined and I think this is the future for branding your company, getting your information out there and communicating to your target market.
• Currently Google SA does not have any competitors in this field and it is huge for them.

Not only do they bring us search results, they have gone and made it a true experience to search for something.

Pay-Per-Click and Quality Scores
Despite popular belief Pay Per Click Ads on Search Result Pages are actually not ranked due to the amount advertisers pay but according to the Quality Score given. Quality Scores are made up of 4 very vital features which is:

1. The Speed of Landing Page
2. The Quality of Landing Page
3. The Number of ‘click troughs’ (high or low)
4. The Moment of Relevance

Some companies make use of additional links (Google co-op) under their search result listing that allows you to simply browse their site without actually opening their landing page eg. Microsoft.

Google SA will be bringing us Google Maps soon with great prospects. It is currently up and running in the States and a real ground breaker when it comes to mapping. You can get step by step directions that guide you from point A to B and these will update if you drag the dots on the map to alternate the route. You can also place ‘yourself’ in the vicinity by dragging the little man onto the street you would like to view – this will allow you to view the surroundings which opens up even more possibilities. Should it just be to familiarize yourself with the area, to get visual land marks for when you are in the area, to sussing out an area before you go look at a house that’s for sale/rent and even better, you can advertise on this virtual street, meaning that browsers can ‘walk into’ your shop, see what it looks like and even order from your menu. This is a whole new advertising market that’s opening up.

Google prides themselves on using a fast platform, they are able to go through posted content in 0.7 seconds by using their spiders to grab all the relevant information. This is even faster abroad and sitting at a whopping 0.03sec. This allows for up to the minute news reporting and CNN tapped into this market. Instead of sending out reporters they now have over 300 000 civilians uploading ground breaking news where they are in the heat of the moment using i-report.

With YouTube being a part of Google they have expanded their services even more. 14% of total traffic in South Africa is just YouTube and this will probably grow due to the fact that they promise to improve the download time and search experience in September as they are building new centers locally with new servers. YouTube statistics can be tracked for your video – how long it’s been viewed, do they complete the watch and from where they are. Companies are starting to utilize this medium to post competitions and to draw the market to their product.

In South Africa we have under 5 million people connected to the internet currently and less than a million broadband users. Hopefully this number will increase as Google is working hard in trying to lower broadband costs. So we can start looking forward to SA going from the most expensive to one of the cheapest in terms of connectivity and they would like to see this at the end of 2010 and have between 12 and 17 million people connected.

Google is clearly bringing the world to us click by click, be it information, other users, video, advertising, maps and up to the minute news reporting. It’s out there – so you might as well use it.