• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, November 26, 2024

Google launched a series of ad campaigns this week. One will change the way users talk and interact with Google's AI technology, Gemini, on Pixel phones.

Another campaign series showcases Google Shopping featured as a game show content looking at how friends exchange gifts during the holidays.

This week Google Shopping launched Can You Gift It?, an original, five-episode game show hosted by Jimmy Kimmel that features five celebrity duos as contestants. 

It is part of a broader holiday shopping campaign that features spots with Gabrielle Union and Dwyane Wade, as well as Charli XCX and Troye Sivan.

The efforts build on previously released holiday ads that spotlight other famous duos and a similar theme around competitive spirit during the holiday season.  

“The Google Shopping game show where the deals are endless and everyone wins,” Kimmel said on one of the episodes. “Today’s contestants are good friends, with each other, not me, but I expect to grow very close to them. One is a record producer, songwriter, and author. The other is a perfectly normal person who never does anything weird at all.”

The episode featuring Benny Blanco and Eric Andre as game participants in the show posted on Monday, but Google will post one “Can You Gift It?” daily to YouTube each day this week.

Each retro-style game show episode features Kimmel and a pair of celebrities who compete in tasks similar to “The Price Is Right” and “The Dating Game.”

The activities rely on Google’s holiday shopping insights and search data. 

The campaign runs through December. 5, across social channels including TikTok, Meta, Reddit and Snap, as well as connected TV (CTV).

EssenceMediacom, Kimmelot, and Jimmy Kimmel Live produced the episodes with Google Shopping.

The Google Pixel Now We’re Talking campaign featuring Gemini Live was launched last week, but it’s likely the most interesting example of how Gemini can be used. It teaches consumers how to have conversations with their phone and, hopefully, get reliable information. 

Google promotes Gemini as a way to engage in natural, back-and-forth voice conversations with the technology on Pixel phones.

The 90-second spot takes viewers through those times when it's just easier and faster to talk things out -- like when someone need a quick pep talk before a workout, help polishing a work email, or a simple explanation of The Fermi Paradox. 

Other 15-second spots in the campaign feature playful exchanges between Gemini Live and multihyphenate Emmy Award-winning actress and author Keke Palmer, reigning WNBA MVP A'ja Wilson, and Liverpool FC and England footballer Trent Alexander-Arnold.

Google’s teams--Google Platforms and Devices, Google Creative Lab, worked with Ogilvy New York to create the spots. They will run across broadcast, digital and social and CTV in the U.S., U.K., Germany, and Japan, and in U.K. cinema through the end of the year.