Google launches first TV Advertisement

Google has launched its first TV advertising campaign across US to promote Chrome, its web browser.

Chrome was launched last in September last year as a direct bid to lure users away from Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. With IE8 Microsoft has definetly taken a huge leap in browser market. Traditionally Google has always shyed away from using traditional marketing mediums, however this latest move shows how desparate Google is to promote Chrome a capture a larger pie of lucarative browser market.

Since the initial burst of publicity, Chrome has failed to provide serious competition to rival browsers, such as Internet Explorer or Mozilla’s Firefox.

According to Net Applications market share study, Chrome has under 2% of internet users compared to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer share of over 65% of users. Mozilla’s Firefox comes second place with over 20% of users share.

This campaign is believed to be an attempt by Google to highlight the effectiveness of the company's TV Ads system, which lets Google act as a broker to sell advertising time on television networks. Google is hoping that the Chrome campaign can help push the concept of using TV Ads into the minds of media executives.

The 30-second spot shows a stop-motion animation in which a tray of children's play bricks is rearranged to resemble a browser window – an image intended to represent the simplicity and ease of using Chrome.

In a statement on the official Google blog, the company said that the video was made by a team from Google Japan as a YouTube clip, but had proved so successful that it had decided to take it on to traditional television.

"After releasing this video on the web, we got lots of positive feedback and thoughtful comments," said the company. "We designed a Google TV Ads campaign which we hope will raise awareness of our browser ... we're excited to see how this test goes and what impact television might have on creating more awareness of Google Chrome."