San Francisco — Search engine giant Google Inc. desperately trying to compete the browser market, according to the official Google Blog announced that the Internet company has introduced its first television advertising campaign across a large networks in the US to promote its Chrome browser, in a bid to capture users away from a market dominated by Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.
Google became the dominant search engine over the uncharted World Wide Web without even having to advertise, but entering an altogether a new battle-ground it has been forced to take a different approach to build up market share for Chrome.
In the past, Google has been promoting its product through wide range of mediums such as, billboards, radio ads, bus wraps and more. Now, it has finally entered into the final frontier, TV ads.
Google entered the browser market last September by launching Chrome, in an attempt to lure users away from Microsoft’s dominant Internet Explorer. And, since the initial outburst of publicity, Chrome has failed to attract serious audience to rival browsers, such as Internet Explorer or Mozilla’s Firefox.
According to statistics from Net Applications, Chrome is used by just 1.4% of Internet users compared to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, which continues to dominate the browser wars with a market share of 66%. Mozilla’s Firefox comes in second place, as the browser choice of 22% of web users and Apple’s Safari program comes in third, with 8%.
Last weekend, Google said it would launch its first ad to promote Chrome, as a result of a fun video produced by the Google Japan team to demonstrate how clean and simple the Google Chrome user interface is.
The 30-second clip shows a stop-motion animation in which a tray of children’s play bricks is rearranged to resemble a browser window — an image intended to represent the simplicity and ease of using Chrome.
In a statement on the official Google blog, the company said that the video was developed by a team from Google Japan as a YouTube clip, but had proved so successful that it had decided to take it on to traditional television.
“After releasing this video on the web, we received lots of positive feedback and thoughtful comments,” said the company. “We designed a Google TV Ads campaign which we hope will raise awareness of our browser, and also help us better understand how television can supplement our other online media campaigns," Google said in a post on the company blog.
“We are excited to see how this test goes and what impact television might have on creating more awareness of Google Chrome,” it added.
Here’s a video of the Google Ad promoting Chrome browser:
It is the first time that Google has directly advertised its products on television in the US. Now, it remains to be seen how mainstream audiences will respond to the clip, however, which has no voice-over, does not mention the fact that it is advertising a web browser and only displays the Google logo at the very end.
The Google TV Ads campaign has been designed using some of the results from our placement-targeted ads on the Google Content Network. The campaign is also an attempt to raise awareness about Chrome browser as well as help Google better understand how television can supplement their online media campaigns.
Most advertisers and TV broadcasters consider the scheme to be an interesting but niche experiment, after striking just a handful of high-profile deals since it first began two years ago.