by Head of Search
Andrew Girdwood
When the CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt, used Twitter to suggest that "Hell has indeed frozen over", speculation began that Google was about to do something it's never done before - run an ad. In fact, Eric pointed our attention directly at the Super Bowl.Andrew Girdwood
Sure enough; Google ran its first ever TV ad during the Super Bowl.
There's no doubt. It's a very Google ad. It's simple but effective and showcases the power of Google's Universal Search solution.
This morning, many popular blogs are displaying the ad as a video embed. The ability to let bloggers display YouTube videos was one of the keys to the video sharing site's success. It's great social media.
But what about search? This morning this writer fired up YouTube and started searching for the video. Search terms like "Google super bowl ad" turned up nothing. In fact, Google's chosen to title the 52-second long video ad "Parisian Love" rather than something more topical.
Now, just a few hours later, the same search produces parodies and copies but does not point to the original.
The problem is not that YouTube's own search function can be slow and awkward at times. The problem is that users don't always search for videos using keywords the advertiser/video producer expected - although, surely, in this case Google might well have thought to use "This was Google's Super Bowl ad" in the video's description.
One of the likely reasons the phrase does not appear in Parisian Love's description is that the video was originally uploaded to YouTube on the 19th of November in 2009.
YouTube didn't really give Google an easy way to reinforce the old video's very important and very real time connection to the Super Bowl ad. In today's advertising world, where ad buyers are increasingly looking at ways to use YouTube to maximise value from video productions, this is a problem.
Does Google's Super Bowl Ad raise awkward questions for YouTube?
