Joao Cabral Online Sales and Operations Manager, South East Asia, Google Inc recently visited Pakistan for a conference. With Google’s business interests continually on the rise, the number of representatives that have visited Pakistan will hopefully continue to grow. Joao’s interview was featured in CMO Pakistan earlier – here’s the online, complete version:
What are some of the differences between how large companies and Small and Medium Enterprise sector use AdWords?
It really depends on the specific advertising objectives of each company, irrespective of size. One of the key features of AdWords is its flexibility and how it can cater for advertisers with different goals and objectives. So, for instance, marketers looking to generate qualified traffic on their websites would typically opt for CPC (cost per click) search campaigns – in which small text-based ads are displayed above or alongside Google’s search results and the advertiser would only pay for the clicks the ads receive.
On the other hand, companies looking for brand awareness would typically opt for CPM (cost-per-thousand impressions) based campaigns where they pay for every thousand times their ad is shown. This gives advertisers the ability to choose from a myriad of ad formats – text, image, and video – in addition to getting exposure on relevant sites on Google’s expansive content network.
Prior to AdWords, there have been several attempts at a flexible ad revenue generating system or platform. What do you think makes AdWords stick out in the minds (and websites) of millions of people around the world?
I believe the popularity of AdWords comes down to its simplicity, ease of use and sheer flexibility. Advertisers have full control over costs, duration and the target audience of their ad campaigns. What’s more, Google is committed to providing the most effective advertising available and offers a variety of different tools and functionality which enables advertisers to track and measure the return on investment of their campaigns.
Advertisers benefit from the added exposure of having their ads shown on Google’s worldwide content network – which reaches over 75% of unique internet users worldwide – in addition to showing their ads on Google. They are also able to advertise through multiple formats including text ads, image and video ads, and the more media rich formats such as Gadget ads – it all depends on their marketing objectives. In short, AdWords provides businesses of any size or industry with a powerful, cost effective tool that enables them to advertise online, reach a targeted audience, and accurately measure the results of their advertising.
What kind of growth or response do you have from emerging markets such as Pakistan?
Being Pakistan as one of the top 10 English speaking countries in the world, Pakistani Internet users have been enjoying most of the Google products including Search, Gmail, AdWords, AdSense, Blogger, Earth, etc. Recently, Google has been trying to better understand the Pakistani Internet landscape so that we can do product localizations and consider new product developments accordingly.
From the statistics available to us, the growth of Internet subscribers and users in Pakistan has been tremendous. In addition to demand for online rich content like video, we are also following the exponential growth of mobile telephony in Pakistan. We hope to plan future Google products for Pakistan accordingly.
What are some online trends (for purposes of proof of concept of innovation) that a Chief Marketing Officer should be aware of?
Generally speaking, some of the trends we’re experiencing include explosive growth in use of Web 2.0 technologies like social media (social networking, social bookmarking, etc.), demand for rich content (correlates directly with broadband penetration), user generated content i.e. citizen journalism (blogging, etc.), significant increase in use of open-source software (e.g. Firefox, etc.), mobile internet (based on GPRS/EDGE, WiMAX, etc.), and many more.
Given all this, there are numerous challenges facing CMOs and marketing agencies. Starting from an organization’s search-engine friendly online presence to attracting online visitors, engaging them and finally retaining them as regular users is one aspect of this new media eco system. Ensuring your brand’s viral presence and interaction with your potential & existing customers all over the social web (Orkut, Blogger, etc.) with rich user-generated-content (YouTube, etc.) is also becoming inevitable. Not to forget there are numerous niche areas of focus too e.g. online recruitment, online games, etc. as well.
In short, some of the key trends to watch for in 2008 would be — User Experience, Contextual Marketing, Content, Social Media, Mobile, etc.
Commentary about Pakistan?
Pakistan is an interesting market for Google – overall ecommerce and internet infrastructure have developed significantly over the past 5 years and users are spending more time in the internet and increasing their online media consumption as a result. I believe Google’s participation in the Marketing 2.0 conference will allow us to get a ‘pulse’ on the market, personally interact with our users and advertisers and get first hand feedback from the market on how Google’s current advertising and consumer product offerings are meeting the needs of our Pakistan users.
