So, Google has advertised on TV, and as befits one of the world’s most powerful brands, it has bought into what is perhaps TV’s most famous annual spot. The 60 second Superbowl ad reputedly cost the online’s most powerful brand a cool $1m. Boy, you could buy a lot of Adwords clicks for that! So this raises two interesting questions. First up why did they do it? And second, how does it make the legions of Google evangelists feel when their leading light piles a million bucks into what many believe to be the “the enemy” - mass marketing?

So why did they do it?  Television does amazing things for brands. It builds stature, it builds status, it builds employee confidence, it rocks competitors and it drives lots of traffic. More than that, TV advertising embeds brands into popular culture. It’s powerful stuff.  However, Google is already part of popular culture so why advertise on TV? My guess is they’re interested in seeing how TV ratings can be correlated to web traffic. I could have saved them around $1m here. TV ads drive web traffic at a rate of between 0.015% and 0.25%.  So with an audience of around 100m viewers, Google could have expected traffic uplifts in the US of between 15,000 and 250,000 within a few hours of transmission. What value is this to Google? When Google searchers clicks on AdWords it generates income for Google. Assume 50% of that 250,000 clicked into AdWords at a cost per click of $2, then there you have it; £250,000 of revenue. Not enough to cover the cost of the spot. But Google shouldn’t be disheartened by this  - these figures are based on buying a spot with inherently high premiums. Outside the Superbowl, the economics might look considerably better.

And for Google’s fan base (of which I am one). They are right, Google AdWords is a very powerful business generator. It collects response at the end of the sales funnel - just as the Yellow Pages did for so many years. But something has to populate that sales funnel and drive search volumes. Something has to make each brand credible; make it top of mind, the safe choice; the right choice. That’s where TV comes in.Even though things look good for Google in search at the moment, I suspect there may be changes ahead - demand for AdWords is forcing up click costs at Google and this may drive search marketing budgets to competitors like Microsoft’s Bing. As Google loses traffic it will look to fight back and it has to do that by holding and  winning back search traffic - the source of its revenue. There may well be a ferocious marketing battle to be fought amongst search providers, with Google standing to lose the most. Testing TV now, may indeed be a dress rehearsal for future TV advertising activity.

It’s interesting to note that predictions of the end of mass marketing tend to come primarily from within the non-TV marketing community. The reason for this is that those who have not been at the “business end” of TV advertising are unlikely to have made careful study of the effects of mass marketing versus the costs of undertaking it. Mass marketing can still be very powerful and it can be very cost effective. The temptation is to assume that because it costs so much, it couldn’t possibly work is erroneous. Perhaps with Google’s use of TV advertising, some of mass marketing’s critics may take time to reconsider. Google has.