Google Comes Up With Rare Ad Campaign To Sell More Apps

Google is launching a rare commercial campaign in an attempt to boost the sales of its online business applications. The company is leasing billboards along major highways in New York, San Francisco, Chicago and Boston in order to promote a set of business applications that sells for $50 per worker annually. The idea is to display a different message each weekday through August, starting with Monday morning's commute.

Well, Google has been selling its applications package since 2007, however, it is now when the search giant realized the need of a more aggressive sales pitch. “People don't necessarily think of Google when it comes to how we can help companies,” said Michael Lock, director of sales and operations for Google's enterprise division in North America.

While Google is looking up to the newly launched ad campaign, it is keeping itself away from advertising its business applications in other offline media, such as magazines, newspapers, television or radio. With the billboard campaign Google aims at attracting corporate customers away from Microsoft Corp.'s e-mail service and industry-leading applications for word processing, spreadsheets and scheduling. Besides, it is also targeting IBM Corp. more or less.

Reportedly, with an attempt to challenge Google's commanding lead in the online ad market, Microsoft had advanced a search partnership with Yahoo Inc. The latter has also upgraded its search engine June this year and renamed it Bing, which is being advertised in a $100 million marketing campaign. Contrary to this, Google has not bought advertising to promote its search engine ever since its inception nearly eleven years ago.

Google has always been confident about its word-of-mouth and free media exposure when it comes to establish its search engine as the Internet's most powerful tool. For the first half of 2009, the advertising connected to the search engine is generating $10.7 billion in revenue. So, it can be said that the strategy proves beneficial for Google! Reportedly, software licensing, including Google's sales of business applications and revenue from other non-advertising sales accounted for just $365 million in revenue during the same period.

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