Marketers all want to the same thing: To reach target audiences at the right moment, in the most effective way to generate sales. A new paid ad product from Google aims to make that task much easier by surfacing sponsored brand content across the web, everywhere connected consumers look. Eran Arkin, Product Manager at Google, recently announced the search engine is testing +Post ads, which provide a way for companies to repurpose their social content online.
+Post Ads spread brands’ messages across the web
Arkin posits +Post ads will be a way for brands to “think of the entire web as their social stream” because they can take a piece of organic content from their Google+ profiles and turn it into a display ad. Google taps its Display Network, giving +Post ad purchasers their pick of more than 2 million sites on which to distribute their brand’s videos, Hangouts, photos and articles.
+Post ads will be a way for brands to “think of the entire web as their social stream.”
So far, +Post ads have been in beta and were available to small group of brands, including Ritz Crackers, Cadbury UK and Toyota USA. Pending feedback from users and advertisers, Google anticipates this sponsored format will be rolled out on a much wider scale.
This update could provide the motivation companies need to finally get on Google+ and participate actively. If +Post ads take off and provide marketers with reach across the ‘net, brands may be eager to keep their Google+ pages populated with fresh custom content to fuel their sponsored distribution strategies. It also demonstrates the interwoven relationship between paid and organic campaigns. Brands will only see success with their sponsored messages if they’re first creating great organic collateral to fuel those efforts.
Google+ gives deeper reach within networks
In addition to cross-internet distribution, Google+ is also giving its advertisers better access to network users. Google+ is launching an ad update, similar to Facebook’s departed sponsored stories, that features the users who have +1’d company pages. Basically, this will show G+ photos in brands’ ads. This idea behind this seems to be that user support will give fresh prospects the incentive to engage with advertisers.
However, there has been pushback against Facebook’s sponsored stories (users claim they never liked certain pages that were promoted to their social networks), and there is already a way to opt out of G+’s update.
Marketers should certainly vet new offerings and determine whether the added reach will provide the lift needed to drive ROI. However, paid content must be part of a larger web marketing strategy to be effective in the long term.
