Google Moving into Digital Display Advertising – Good Thing or Bad?

Internet and search engine giants Google, are looking to digital display advertising to expand there already burgeoning advertising business, according to reports. Display advertising, which encompasses everything from magazine advertising, internet advertising, cell phone advertising, and even digital signage.

While the “threat” of Google entering the world of digital signage has been mooted before, recent changes in Google including, Google TV, the internet company has extended its Adwords campaign to include video, allowing RSS feeds, with digital signage displays an obvious step for such content.

Digital signage network operators could receive Google’s RSS feed to provide Google adverts, in a similar way internet sites can provide Google’s sponsored links on their site to generate income.

And with Google owning media sites like YouTube, and now Google TV, digital signage seems an obvious step for the internet giants. But will this be a good thing for media and digital signage companies?

With media owners describing Google as both a possible friend and enemy, the answer is unclear; however, with the display advertising and out of home market, now expanding faster than the search engine market, this lucrative market has many attractions for Google.

Separate the Wheat from Chaff

While large out of home companies such as JCDecaux and Clear Channel perhaps have little to fear from healthy competition from Google, however, with such fragmentation in the display advertising and digital signage industries, many smaller content providers and media producers may find they simply can’t compete, but Google suggests this is perhaps not a bad thing.

Neal Mohan, Google’s vice-president of display advertising products was reported as saying: “The world is extremely fragmented … A lot of media dollars through fragmentation and inefficiency, there is a lot of wastage and campaigns are less effective. Our approach is how to be an end-to-end platform in the market.”

Google coming to a digital signage screen near you?