Jason Spero, Google’s head of performance media, had some interesting things to say when he was interviewed by VentureBeat. In a recent Q&A, Spero talked about how the company is approaching mobile ads, attribution, and more.
Spero was a key member of the AdMob team that Google acquired to put it in front-runner status on mobile app monetization. What role does AdMob play today?
“That was four years ago. Amazing!” said Spero. “Mobile has grown into every corner at Google and the AdMob technology and team have helped fuel that growth. AdMob technology has been woven into Google’s Display offerings and has also accelerated other offerings most recently in Google Analytics, ad-serving, exchanges, and much more. More than 650,000 apps use AdMob to monetize across iOS and Android, and the AdMob network reaches 900 million unique devices a month.”
Spero said the AdMob acquisition was “a catalyst in Google’s investment and leadership around mobile media.”
Interestingly, Spero doesn’t accept the usual media mantra that the battle of the titans is a race between Google and Facebook. While Facebook was AWOL in mobile just three years ago, it has changed the dynamics, but so have others.
“Given how early it still is for mobile commerce, and how complex the multi-screen marketing ecosystem is — it includes search, app promotions, in-app ads and commerce, online to offline, and much more — I’d have a hard time counting the number of horses in this race. This market continues to amaze me; there’s innovation everywhere,” Spero explained.
What’s Google doing about attribution in a mobile-centric world?
Spero talked about some new initiatives.
“Last year, to help advertisers better measure this ‘full value’, we launched Estimated Total Conversions, a first step toward showing advertisers the full value of their Adwords campaigns,” he said. “It does this by providing an anonymous, aggregate estimate of mobile-specific conversion types. We started with “cross-device conversions” — conversions that start on one screen, and end on another.”
Spero believes mobile connectivity has radically changed consumer behavior and advertiser strategies.
“There’s more around the idea of ‘on demand’ and ‘moments’,” Spero explained. “Gaming is a great example, but this really touches on a huge variety of things: “moments” include when I am deciding where to eat or what hotel to stay in or which refrigerator to buy. Think about the consumer shopping for a car. Almost all of them are using their phones on the lot. They are searching and watching videos and asking friends and family for opinions.This creates moments for marketers to engage that consumer like never before.”
Spero has much more insight about Google goings-on. To have a look, go here.
