Around the Net
Google Says Super Bowl Ad Just Sort Of Happened
- Google Blog et al., Monday, February 8, 2010 1:08 PM
"We didn't set out to do a Super Bowl ad, or even a TV ad for search," wrote a bashful-seeming Schmidt in a company blog post. "Our goal was simply to create a series of short online videos about our products and our users, and how they interact ... But we liked this video so much, and it's had such a positive reaction on YouTube, that we decided to share it with a wider audience."
According to Bloomberg, "The ad demonstrated features of the company's search engine, including its translation functions ... The commercial, called 'Parisian Love,' showed an Internet user relying on Google to court someone in France."
"Unoriginal?" asks The Social. "Maybe ... It didn't showcase anything totally new from Google, as search is the
company's longstanding lifeblood."
Not that Google had any interest in attracting too much attention with their ad. If they had, they might have substituted the
ad's "Parisian Love" focus for, say, Tiger Woods -- as this spoof
ad demonstrates.
Either way, Google is famous for its lack of consumer-facing advertising. Yet, according to Search Engine Land, the Super Bowl ad represents the search
giant's increasing willingness to at least experiment with various placements. "In May 2009,"
for one, "Google ran TV ads for its Chrome browser, making use of remnant ad inventory available through non-major television broadcast channels."
"I don't
think that their Super Bowl ad is evidence of anything other than the fact that [Google] could use an already created and packaged message to reach a large audience when their competition
wasn't," writes Market Pilgrim. "Do you really think that the cost of that ad is of any consequence to Google's bottom line? I suspect they figured they could smoke the crappy ads
for chips and beer with a simple message and create buzz worth more than $ 3 mil. ."
