What are Google's long-term ambitions? Nothing less than creation of "the largest marketing platform in the world," Tim Armstrong, Google's vice president for ad sales, said this morning at the
company's new offices in New York's Chelsea.
"At the end of the day, we'd like to see Madison Avenue get bigger," Armstrong said, adding that Google wants to combine Madison Avenue with
Silicon Valley to forge what he hopes will be the largest marketing platform around.
Google opened in New York six years ago, but the new office--so large that the company provides scooters
for employees to travel from one end of the floor to the other--marks a significant investment in the media capital of the world. New York is key to Google's future, Armstrong said, because "Google
has become a large advertising company."
Even the office's physical location appears aimed at helping Google forge deals with traditional brand marketers. Consider, Google now resides in the
same building as the ad agency Deutsch. Google already has worked with Deutsch/LA; surely sharing a physical building can't hurt the budding relationship between the companies.
But, at least
in the past, many traditional brand advertisers were slow to embrace Google. Armstrong detailed how initial attempts to make inroads with Madison Avenue in 2000 were met with a decidedly chilly
reception. When the company made its first sales call in New York and described pay-per-click text ads, the recipient was less than impressed. After announcing that pay-per-click text links didn't
sound like real advertising, the recipient hung up.
More recently, Google's initial
attempts to expand into print media also weren't as successful as the company had hoped. In June, Jonathan Rosenberg, Google's senior vice president for product management, said the venture to
auction off print ads, which launched in February, has been one of the biggest disappointments of the year. While a lot has changed in six years, it's also clear that Google still has a ways to go
before significantly branching out beyond search advertising.