Pundits were dancing on the grave of Google Plus last week when news broke that Vic Gundotra, Google’s senior VP of social, is leaving the company. Immediately rumors began to swirl about the impending breakup of G+ features, such as hangouts, being featured as stand alone products. However, the breakup coupled with some very interesting new Google ad products might create some very interesting opportunities for marketers.
Google has officially opened up Page Post Ads to any brand with over 1000 +1’s. What are +Post Ads? It’s an ingenious advertising platform that allows Google+ brands pages to pay to push their G+ content posts into Google’s Display Advertising spaces on millions of websites. What’s unique about that?
1. The ads are actually fully interactive G+ posts. That means people can comment on them, +1 them, and reshare them right from the site where they see the ad.
2. That means these ads are content rather than advertising messages. If done right, they actually can add value for the viewer of a web page, rather than be a distraction. So they serve to build your brand goodwill and authority.
3. The ads take advantage of Google’s highly sophisticated AdWords Display Ad targeting to get your content ads to just the right audience.
4. +Post Ads monetize Google+ without putting any ads in the social stream. Brilliant!
5. +Post Ads give brands the paid option they want out of any social network. Most successful social media marketing strategies involve a combination of owned, earned, and paid media.
Google at its core has always been about advertising. Any product that hasn’t tied in some way to serving up ads has historically struggled. Finally working to monetize Google plus could just be the kick in the ass it needs.