Digital ads only in their infancy, Google’s Gingras says

MONTREAL — Digital advertising will continue to evolve into new forms we can’t yet predict, Richard Gingras, vice-president of Alphabet Inc.’s Google News, said Thursday as he spoke about criticisms by media outlets that Google is taking ad revenue away from their platforms. “I suspect in the book of the history of digital advertising, we’re probably, at best, at the end of Chapter 1. We’ll see how that evolves. There are new approaches happening every day,” he said, citing the growth of native or branded advertising, which he said now accounts for 30 per cent of New York Times’ ad revenue. “That was a form that didn’t exist three years ago. What will be the form three years from now? We don’t know. It will continue to evolve,” he said in response to a question about worries that have been expressed by media outlets over the past year. Gingras repeated the same stance he previously took in front of a Parliamentary committee, saying that “we didn’t take anyone’s ad revenue. Obviously media environments change.” Speaking to reporters following a speech in Montreal organized by the Montreal Council on Foreign Relations, Gingras used the example of the shift in the ad environment that occurred after the introduction of television in the early 1950s. “It took dramatic percentages of the ad market almost immediately, within three years. Most of it came out of local newspapers, because at that time television was a local advertising medium only.” He noted that Google didn’t set out to become an advertising giant when it was created, when its founders were just looking to build a better search engine. “Guess what happened? Along with it came the notion that if I’m searching for a refrigerator, what an ideal opportunity to put an ad saying ‘oh, buy my refrigerator.’ A completely new form of advertising that hadn’t existed before.” Gingras added: “I suspect the advertising environments are going to continue to change as well… What always points out to us is to be careful what you assume about long-term success. We know how rapidly things can change.” The company has seen challenges to its ad system recently, with some advertisers pulling their ads from the company’s YouTube platform in a move some traditional broadcasters said was part of a trend of ad revenue moving back into television. On Thursday, Gingras also addressed the issue of ad-blocking, saying ad-blockers are “a very big threat” to online publishing, with usage being as high as 40 per cent in Germany. He said the impulse to use an ad-blocker is understandable. “Look at the sites that you go to and the kinds of ad experiences you bump into and it’s a wonder why you stay on the page,” he said. Gingras noted that Google is taking steps with projects to improve ads, such as its Accelerated Mobile Pages platform and an initiative that is “about re-architecting how ads are served and rendered on the pages.” He added that “the situation with advertising on the web has been the tragedy of the commons. It’s people looking out for their own specific interest with their ad but not recognizing that it’s having a damaging effect on the overall experience. The only way I can hope to address it is by beginning to evolve the architecture of the ad environment so that better things can happen.” During his speech earlier in the afternoon, Gingras cited data by Interactive Advertising Bureau of Canada (IAB) Canada that showed one in six Canadians have ad-blocking software installed on their desktops. He also spoke about growing the issue of fake news, stating that it’s necessary to reinstate the public’s trust in the media and help users think critically and make their own decisions about the legitimacy of the news they are reading. “We have to help them figure out the difference between quality sources of news and those that are not,” such as more detailed citing of sources in news articles, he said. — With reporting by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca and editing by Charelle Evelyn at cevelyn@thewirereport.ca

Digital ads only in their infancy, Google’s Gingras says

Broadcast | April 13, 2017

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Digital ads only in their infancy, Google’s Gingras says

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