Promoting Chrome
Google didn’t advertise its way to popularity, instead, it became the most popular search engine in the world relying primarily on word of mouth for promoting its products. Nevertheless, the company has marketed indirectly on TV before, with its products appearing in Pontiac and Apple commercials.
The company is taking the initiative towards TV ads now for its internet browser Chrome, airing a 30 second clip on TV this weekend. Professionally created videos to promote Chrome have been showing up all over the Web, both on Google-owned properties like YouTube and websites like LinkedIn.
The commercial was developed by Google Japan a few months back. The ad is abstract, simply featuring the message “Install Google Chrome” at the end, to “demonstrate how clean and simple” Chrome is.
The clip was chosen from the promotional videos of Chrome posted on YouTube. It was uploaded in late January and has since been viewed 2 million times. Google communications director Ellen West disclosed that Google chose to air the spot on TV keeping in mind the popularity of the video. "We were looking for ways to increase awareness about browsers and Chrome," she said.
West further declared that Google will assess the response to the ads and then decide on the further course of action. She declined to give specifics of what programming Google is focusing on. However, she did reveal that the commercial will run only in the US and not on networks unaffiliated with Google TV.
Browser war
Google launched Chrome last year in September amid much fanfare, claiming it to be faster, easier and safer way to browse the Internet. However, the hype did not pay off. According to Net Applications’ data, its market share has not yet reached 2 percent of Internet users.
The market is dominated by Microsoft’s Internet Explorer with 66 percent penetration; Mozilla’s Firefox is second with a 22 percent share, followed by Apple’s Safari with 8.21 percent. Chrome’s share is 1.42 percent, ahead of Netscape (0.82 percent), Opera (0.68 percent) and “other” (0.22 percent).
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