The above video interview is from Internet Week in NYC.
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I caught up with Neal Mohan, VP Product @ Google, at the Federated Media Conversational Marketing conference in NYC.
During his presentation, Neal mentioned real-time data opportunities that are available to marketers that weren’t available even a year ago. I asked him to elaborate on the opportunities and what changed in the past year to allow both brands and publishers to take advantage of real-time data
He also mentioned a $50 billion disequilibruim between time spent online and online advertising dollars. In the above video Neal explains why the equilibrium exists and what needs to change for marketers to feel comfortable allocating more of their budgets online.
Some other questions I asked include:
- Where do you see the most growth over the next 24 months (display, video, search, mobile, local, deals)?
- What are agencies telling you? What frustrates them? What excites them?
- Workflow friction and inneficiency when doing digital buys – new innovative ad formats creates friction because brands and their agencies have to create custom creative. How do we balance innovation and efficiency?
- What is Google’s social strategy? What’s the most social thing Google has done to date?
- The CEO of Starcom (who also spoke at the event) said display is peaking, real-time bidding is growing, and Starcom is investing in content marketing. What is Google doing in the content marketing space?
- Brands love ad retargeting. Will we see search retargeting any time soon from Google?
In addition to the Federated Media conference, Neal also spoke at the IAB Internet Week event. He made some predictions in his presentation, which he posted on the Google blog:
- The number of display ad impressions will decrease by 25 percent per person. Today, people are bombarded by online ads, but they don’t connect with most of these ads in a meaningful way. I believe the trend will be for people to ultimately see fewer, but better ads.
- Engagement rates across all display ads will increase by 50 percent. As ads become less cluttered, more relevant, more engaging and more attractive, we’ll see the rate at which people interact with display ads (such as watching videos or playing games) increase dramatically.
- People will have a direct say in 25 percent of the ads they see. Whether by choosing to watch—or not watch—video ads, updating their ads preferences to customize the ads they see or actively subscribing to or choosing to receive particular ads, users will be more in control of when and how they see ads online.
- 35 percent of campaigns will primarily use metrics beyond clicks and conversions. Technology is helping marketers measure their ads with new tools that look at factors like emotional engagement and impact on offline behavior (like in-store shopping choices). We see a longer-term future where these become the primary metrics used to measure the success of a campaign, meaning marketers will be able to deliver the ads that potential customers say they like the most.
- 25 billion ads per day will tell people why they are seeing them. We believe it’s important to give people as much information as possible about why they see particular ads. That’s why we’ve always included an “Ads by Google” notice, and now the AdChoices logo, on ads across the Google Display Network. We strongly support the widespread use of this logo by members of the display industry and by 2015, believe that this sort of notice will become ubiquitous.
- Over 40 percent of online Americans will name display ads as their favorite ad format. We recently conducted a survey with YouGov of more than 1,000 U.S. Internet users, asking them what ad formats they liked. The number of people who said they preferred display ads trailed slightly behind the number who liked glossy magazine ads, cinema ads and even sky-writing—formats that have been around for more than 50 years! We think this will change. Display ads provide an incredible platform to engage, excite and inspire. If we as marketers, publishers and technology providers can deliver experiences that delight the user, we can take this industry to new heights.
I believe that display advertising will eventually grow to become a $200 billion industry. If we make users our focus as I described this morning, it will put us well on track to reach that goal. I can’t wait to see a future in which the full potential of display ads is realized, providing a universally positive experience for people online and helping grow the businesses of publishers and marketers.



