Several years ago, Google’s top executives clearly realized they needed to create growth engines beyond search. As they looked for new opportunities, two stood out: first, the shift from the PC web to mobile, and second, the rise of “intelligent display” – advertising that works at the brand level, and not just lead-generation and demand fulfillment, which is where search has always ruled.
The moves the company subsequently made have both paid off. First, Google acquired Android and then AdMob. And second, it acquired Doubleclick, and began in earnest to build out (and buy) a display network that moved AdSense from a secondary remnant network to a first-order premium display platform. The two are clearly connected.
At the IAB conference earlier this year, then Google CEO (now Executive Chairman) Eric Schmidt declared that the Internet display market would reach $200 billion. Yep, that’s two hundred billion dollars. Eric didn’t give a ton of details about how that number might be achieved, but he did mention the core obstacles to reaching it: making digital as efficient and as easy to buy as television. Right now, it’s not.
The man who wrote that speech for Schmidt is Neal Mohan, Google’s VP of Display Advertising Products, who I’ll be interviewing onstage at CM Summit next week. When we spoke last month, Mohan noted a $50 billion disconnect between consumer attention given to digital, and consumer attention given to television. In other words, major brand advertisers are spending a lot more in TV than in digital, a theme that many others have echoed in my preparation for Summit conversations (see Desmond and Matthews, for example).
Mohan wants to correct this discrepancy by providing a seamless, real-time environment for digital marketing, and of all the companies who want to play in this space, Google is clearly in the lead position. I’ll be asking him about all the buzzy acronyms – DSPs, RTB, ROI etc. – but I’ll also be asking about his competition, which include Yahoo, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, and a slew of fast growing startups. I’ll also be asking him about the role of publishers in this new world – can they thrive if Google wins? And of course, I’ll have to ask him about Google’s social strategy, and how it feels to take on Apple in the handset and mobile advertising world.
What would you like to hear from Mohan onstage next week?
As a reminder, we’ll hear from more than 30 presenters at CM Summit, 11 of which will be one-one interviews. Those include:
Reimagining Yahoo!: Chief Product Officer Blake Irving
Filmmaker Tiffany Shlain Declares Interdependence: The Internet Is Changing How We Think
The Colorful Bill Nguyen: The Market Will Come
The Swan Song of Mich Matthews, Outgoing Chief of Marketing at Microsoft
Taking Twitter to the Next Level: President of Global Revenue Adam Bain
On the Future of Media: Starcom MediaVest Group CEO Laura Desmond
I’ll be adding posts on the remaining folks – Demand CEO Richard Rosenblatt, entertainer will.i.am, Visa CMO Antonio Lucio, and Facebook’s Carolyn Everson, shortly.
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The CM Summit is less than one week away, and nearly 450 folks have registered, we can only take 500….so register today before we sell out.
Special thanks to our sponsors: Blackberry, AT&T, Google, Quantcast, Demand Media, Facebook, Outbrain, Pandora, Pixazza, R2integrated, Slideshare, Yahoo!, AOL, American Express OPEN, Balloon, BriefLogic, Evidon, Marketing Evolution/Telmar, Mobile Roadie, Spiceworks, and Ustream. And a shout out to our partners at IAB, Mashable, paidContent, ReadWriteWeb, SMAC, and TechZulu.
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