Adgully Exclusive | Our Display ads not at the expense of Search: Google's Kiran Mani

Last couple of years, Google has been more focused in driving consumer and consumer demands for their products. However with the changing times, Google's plan of action has also modified considerably. Leveraging from a platform like GoaFest 2011, what are the new initiatives to continue its brand building for Google? Kiran Mani, Head of Vertical Sales, Google elaborates on this as well as its challenges and deliberates on the social media explosion in an exclusive conversation with Adgully.

Commenting on the opportunities Google saw in GoaFest 2011, he said, "We have participated in GoaFest for many years now. However this is the first time we have really announced our arrival. We are now at a very interesting inflexion point in India. We have a hundred million users who are already online. We believe that voice moving to data on the telecom side is going to explode over the next three or four years."

"Now what is important is we need to take this medium and speak to people who actually make this medium more interesting for the consumer. They happen to be creative people or advertisers or media, so what better occasion than GoaFest to speak to the people who actually drive creativity and innovation in this country," he further added.

Mani is of the opinion that offline professionals need to be brought onto the digital medium and an evangelization process is required. "Ten years ago, we were all introduced to the internet medium. I think the time is now as users we intuitively know what the internet can do. However when we sit on the other side and we look at it as people who want to use this medium to reach out to intelligent audience, it's a marriage of traditional artistic way of doing marketing with the modern scientific way of doing marketing. We consider it our job to basically make that transition for advertisers and get the industry moving."

Although Google has always had search at its centre, Mani is of the opinion that if the company has moved to display it hasn't been at the expense of search. Search remains as the core of what Google does. "If you really looked at it, we have moved away from search to social. We want to be on communities and speak to friends on the online medium. Also there is an online consumption of entertainment whether it is IPL, World Cup or Dabang. As users expand their internet footprint from search to research to entertainment to social, Google believe that we needs to stay relevant and we need to stay important to the consumer," Mani said.

"Display is really taking the consumers' experience beyond search and making it as much richer as researching content. We look at how we can make content richer and interactive and inspire advertisers to create campaigns that will make the user remember a brand for a longer period of time," he further added.

Building a connect with the youth is essential when more than half the population is less than 30 years old in a country like ours. Out of the hundred million people who are online in India, 65% of that audience is between the age group of 15 to 34. "So if any advertisers today want to look at young high network individuals in India, the internet literally offers you a hundred per cent target audience. It becomes an invaluable target audience for a variety of brands in India," Mani explained.

Commenting on the challenges in front of Google at this point of time, Mani elaborated, "People are doing a lot more things online, advertisers want to do a lot many more things online. Creative people today don't get this medium, they really want to engage with this medium but they don't know how to get things started. Our challenge is to marry these three. We believe when more and more advertisers get online and provide more and interesting content for users, and there are creative ways to express it, there is magic waiting to happen. It is our job to get the magic happening."

Social media is the buzz word all around. So how does Google combat it? "Social media is an interesting space and there are a lot of activities that is happening over there. We have had our presence in social media. Also it is important to define social media in the right way. Email exchanging or video viewing is also social media. We have significance presence in various parts of a person's social life. There are other areas where we will come up with new products, however it is still too early to talk about it. In the next twelve to eighteen months, you will see a lot more initiatives coming up on the social front from our side," Mani stated.

Brands like Google are transcending into newer platforms like social media simultaneously keeping search at its core. | By Janees Antoo [janees(at)adgully.com]