Business Photos Comes to India

In 2010 we started a project in select cities worldwide to take photographs of business interiors. In this pilot, we’ve been taking 360-degree photographs of businesses, with their permission, to highlight the qualities that make their locations stand out. In addition to the photos that business owners can upload directly through Google Places, these photos help potential customers get a better view of the decor, merchandise, food, and more on each business’ Place Page and on Google.com.



We are now excited to bring this pilot program to India, starting with Hyderabad and rolling out to several other cities. The photographs are shot by Google appointed photographers who work directly with the business owner to arrange a time to do the photo shoot. The images will show prospective customers the interiors, decor, merchandise — and all of this will be done at no cost to the business owner. The panoramic photos will appear alongside other still photos on a business’ Place Page and can help potential customers get a better sense of what an establishment has to offer and if they’d like to visit it in person.



If you’d like your business to be considered for a visit from Google’s photographers, you can learn more and express your interest by filling out this form. Right now we’re focusing on businesses like restaurants, cafes, spas, salons, gyms, showrooms, and retail stores, but all are welcome to apply. While we’ll only be able to take panoramic pictures of a portion of those who apply depending on the demand, any business owner around the world can easily upload their own still photographs and videos to their Place Page by logging in to Google Places.



Posted by Rahul Kulkarni, Senior Product Manager



India pilot details and FAQs - Business Photos

Announcing the 90 Regional Finalists of the Google Science Fair 2012

[Cross-posted from the Google Science Fair Blog]



Congratulations to the regional finalists of the second Google Science Fair! These top 90 entries from around the world represent some incredibly innovative and groundbreaking science.



This year’s competition was even more international and diverse than last year. We had thousands of entries from more than 100 countries, and topics ranging from improving recycling using LEGO robots to treating cancer with a substance created by bees to tackling meth abuse. Our judges were impressed by the quality of the projects, and it was no easy task to evaluate the creativity, scientific merit and global relevance of each submission to narrow down the entries to just 90 finalists.



Thirteen of our 90 finalists have also been nominated for the Scientific American Science in Action award, the winner of which will be announced on June 6 along with our 15 finalists. These top 15 and the Science in Action winner will be flown out to Google’s headquarters in California in July for our celebratory finalist event and for the last round of judging, which will be conducted by our panel of renowned scientists and innovators.



Now, let’s get excited for the results!



The regional finalists in each of the three age categories are:



ASIA (Age 13 - 14)

Sadanand Patil, India

Utkarsh Gupta, India

Anjan Venkatesh, India

Aravind Muraleedharan, India

Nitya Raju, India

Aditya Jain, India

Sumit Singh, India

Ayushi Khedkar, Shraddha Kukade, Pournima Shinde, India

Nihar dalal, India

Shravan Patankar, Abhishek Dedhe, India



ASIA (Age 15 - 16)

Ivan Jie Xiong Ang, Malaysia

Marco Ochsner, Ludwig Hruza, Singapore

Edith Loo, Li Yin Tan, Singapore

Rohit Fenn, India

Hamza Azhar, Pakistan

Benjamin Chan, Paul Jeanbart, Singapore

Xi Xu, China

Scott Guan, Cher Yeoh, China

May Ning Law, Shi Hui Ang, Ruixin Ng, Singapore

Akshat Boobna, India




ASIA (Age 17 - 18)

Shaoxiong Luo, Singapore

Mark Borris Aldonza, Philippines

Geoffrey Tanudjaja, Singapore

Michael Teoh, Singapore

Shan Tan, Singapore

Wenqing Yan, Ronghui He, Singapore

Chung Kyu Kim, Ho Shin Cho, Joo Hee Lee, South Korea

Raghavendra Ramachanderan, India

Kay Yi Low, Singapore

Wataru Ogasa, Takeshi Kitagawa, Youta Nakagawa, Japan



EMEA (Age 13 - 14)

Sakhiwe Shongwe, Bonkhe Mahlalela, Swaziland

Carlos Vega García, Spain

Natanel Levis, Israel
Marcin Pitek, Poland

Ana María Santos Espósito, Spain

India Hannon, Naomh Hannon, Isabelle Bond, England

Isabel Medrano Sáinz, Spain

Anthony Carmoy, France

Alexey Kozlov, Milena Klimenko, Ukraine

Ralph Moran, Ireland




EMEA (Age 15 - 16)

Artem Mosiyenko, Javed Lindner, Germany

Mohammed Al Eydan, Saudi Arabia

Pablo González Recio, Alvaro Cuevas Alvarez, Alejandro Sánchez Lechón, Spain

Shahd Al Jasser, Saudi Arabia

Iván Hervías Rodríguez, Marcos Ochoa, Sergio Pascual, Spain

Gonzalo Balbás Moñivas, Spain

Judith Calvo Rull, Spain

Omar Obeya, Egypt

Karsten Roth, Germany

Menna AbdelGawad, Saudi Arabia



EMEA (Age 17 - 18)

Danijar Hafner, Germany

Eugen Hruska, Germany

Till Speicher, Paul Georg Wagner, Germany

Ibrahim Khalil, Egypt

Eduardo Sancho Calzada, Alejandra Bargues Carot, Laura García Marco, Spain

Muireasa Carroll, Mairéad Kingston, Denise Hurley, Ireland

Melvin Zammit, Malta

Abdallah Reda, Egypt

Adrián Díaz, Sandra Garrido Romero, Spain

Philip Glass, Callum Middleton, England




The Americas (Age 13 - 14)

Kriti Lall, USA

Anirudh Jain, USA

Jonah Kohn, USA

Mark Liang, USA

Andrew Chen, USA

Raymond Wang, Canada

Garima Singh, USA

Arjun Mahajan, Maya Flannery, Jonathan Berman, USA

Suruchi Ramanujan, USA

Martin Schneider, Joshua Li, USA



The Americas (Age 15 - 16)

Kimberley Yu, Phillip Yu, USA

Natalie Ng, USA

Rishabh Mazmudar, USA

Emily S. Wang, Trevor Wang, USA

Joshua Meier, USA

Catherine Wong, USA

Katherine Zimmerman, USA

Sabera Talukder, USA

Grace Brosofsky, USA

Alejandro Andres Fuentes Herrera, Chille



The Americas (Age 17 - 18)

 Daniel Wang, USA

Brittany Wenger, USA

Yamini Naidu, USA

Karen Resnick, USA

Grace Pan, USA

Yuhao (Danny) Huang, Canada

Blake Smith, Vickram Gidwani, USA

Pascal Gendron, Canada

Yassine Bouanane, Canada

Ricardo Enrique Alba Torres, Jessica Alba Torres, Colombia



The Scientific American Science in Action Award nominations are:

Anjan Venkatesh, India

Sumit Singh, India

Geoffrey Tanudjaja, Singapore

Sakhiwe Shongwe, Swaziland

Carlos Vega García, Spain

Mena Abdel Gawad, Saudi Arabia

Mark Liang, USA

Andrew Chen, USA

Catherine Wong, USA

Sabera Talukder, USA

Grace Brosofsky, USA

Ricardo Enrique Alba Torres, Jessica Alba Torres, Colombia

Katherine Zimmerman, USA



Thanks to all of the students around the world who submitted projects to the Google Science Fair and congratulations to all the young scientists who were selected as regional finalists.

Posted by Sam Peter, Google Science Fair Team

Missed registration this year? Click here to sign up for a notification when registration opens for the Google Science Fair 2013.

The Blogger In Draft Blog Is Being Retired

Cross-posted from the Blogger in Draft blog



In 2007, we introduced Blogger In Draft, a special version of Blogger where new features could reach users early and let people try new things. We also introduced the Blogger In Draft blog, and for the past five years, we’ve introduced new updates and options here, often before we told the rest of the world on our official blog, Buzz.

With the recent launch of our Google+ page, we have another great way to keep you updated on new features, both for everyone and those of you who love seeing things early. To simplify the many places you can get updates, we will be retiring the Blogger in Draft blog, with this being the final post. Going forward, we’d like to invite you to follow our official blog and our Google+ page to find out what’s new with Blogger.

This doesn’t mean the Blogger In Draft service is going anywhere, so don’t fret! You’ll still get all the shiny goodness as fast as we can bring it to you. But we’ll be talking about it somewhere else.

Mark your calendars for DoubleClick Insights on June 5th

From our vantage point, we see unprecedented opportunity as the digital media world continues to grow and diversify. What does this mean for the future of buying and selling ads online?

Tune in and find out as Google's Neal Mohan, VP of Display Advertising sits down with industry leaders to explore how the digital ecosystem is swiftly evolving, and how advertisers and publishers can work better together to chart a path to capitalize on every opportunity, while simultaneously addressing the challenges we face.

The live stream will start on June 5, 2012, at 9:00 am PDT, and you’ll be able to watch from your computer, tablet, or mobile device.



Please register for this virtual event by visiting the DoubleClick Insights Live Stream page.



DoubleClick Insights

Tuesday, June 5th 2012

9:00am - 1:00pm PST

Set event reminder today



Following us on Twitter? Use the #dclkinsights as you're watching the event.



Posted by Stephen Kliff and Scott Brown, DoubleClick Marketing

Answering to Our Users - Delivering on Commitments

Last year at IAB’s Innovation Days, I made a number of predictions, all focused on answering one central question: how can we put the user at the center of all that we do? One year later, I think it’s time for a progress report - to hold ourselves accountable and see how far we’ve come. I presented an update on some of my predictions earlier today at Digital Media Summit, hosted by Luma Partners:

Prediction: People will have a direct say in 25% of the ads they see
Update: We’ve seen choice friendly formats take off across the industry. In our own network, engaged views of TrueView skippable ads grew 4x last year. Going beyond ads, we rolled out paywall alternative Google Consumer Surveys, which has already shown more than 300 million surveys, with an average publisher RPM of $12. Given all the innovation, I actually think we aimed too low and that consumers will have a say in well over half of the ads they see.

Prediction: Engagement rates across all display ads will increase 50%
Update: This increase in engagement will be driven by two factors: relevance and creativity. While technological innovations continue to improve relevance, we believe rich media will be the key to unlocking the creative potential of digital advertising. According to Nielsen AdRelevance, rich media impressions almost doubled in 2011. We’re committed to helping creative agencies scale and optimize rich media ads with templatized ad units in the latest version of DoubleClick Studio.

Prediction: 35% of campaigns will use metrics beyond clicks and conversions
Update: As we move to a model that seeks to drive engagement versus just clicks, we need new measures of success. We’re working with the industry-wide “Making Measurement Make Sense” (3MS) initiative to establish new standards for brand advertisers to measure reach and engagement. And just last month, we launched the Brand Activate Initiative with several pilots for new metrics--Active View, which shows brands whether their ad has been seen; and Active GRP, the digital counterpart to the gross rating point. We’ve already received interest from dozens of major brands.

As an industry, we’ve made plenty of progress over the last year. With all the innovations to do right by our user, I actually have two new predictions I’d like to add to the list.

New Prediction: 25% of brands will favor digital ads over all other media
This is a pretty bold prediction, considering today this number is probably close to none. So why are we so bullish? First, audiences continue to move online: in 2011, households with broadband but with no cable TV, increased 23% (Nielsen Cross-Platform Report Q3’11). Second, so is content: the newly launched YouTube Original Channels alone will introduce 25 new hours of original programming a day. Third, technology is offering new levels of control and measurement: technologies like real-time bidding will allow for improved targeting while initiatives like 3MS and Brand Activate will demonstrate effectiveness. With reach, control, quality content and measurement, I think the real question will become, why wouldn’t a brand name digital their favorite medium?

New Prediction: 100% of campaigns will be integrated everywhere
All signs indicate that campaigns that reach across screens - TV, desktops, smartphones and tablets -- are more effective. For example, in a study conducted by Google and Nielsen Multi-Media Labs in September 2011, users who saw a multi-screen Volvo campaign had a 24% higher brand recall than those that viewed their ads on TV alone. We’re increasingly seeing increased interest in buying across screens on our own platforms, like DoubleClick for Publishers Mobile, where we’ve seen the number of impressions delivered double every quarter.

The online advertising ecosystem is complex, and in order for digital advertising to be a medium that provides a great experience for consumers, marketers and publishers alike, we all need to work together. For our part, we’ve invested in hundreds of partnerships to better support publishers, and advertisers, ultimately serve our users. Happier consumers will drive better performing ads, more money for publishers and increased ad spend (including marketing budget) for agencies. I look forward to seeing the continued innovation that this “user revolution” inspires and working with all of you to move towards the bright future I hope we all envision for this industry.

Posted by Neal Mohan, Vice President, Display Advertising

5 YouTube Tips to Keep Videos Alive

YouTube, as always, is an unbeatable video website that has reached countless milestones. Despite issues of copyright infringements and the fear of oversaturation, a lot of online users are still on the platform uploading video after video. However, the majority of video uploaders are remiss on techniques that can successfully launch their videos to the point of becoming viral. They only think in terms of YouTube views and not on longevity. What they need are techniques that will help them see the big picture of a YouTube success.

Why not try these tried and tested strategies?

1. Piggy Back Technique
   
   

The piggy back technique pertains to riding on the limelight of others. There are two ways to do it. First is to leverage your video to what is already trending or popular online. You want to be swept together with the popular videos or topics that people are currently searching for. You will appear in the search results which will give you a bigger chance to get clicked and viewed. Second is to post video responses to niche-related YouTube channels. 

2. Relevant Online Communities
   
   

Look for popular and relevant online communities where there is a pool of users. You can sign up for Digg or Reddit and start establishing relationships with community members. When the time is right, you can start sharing your videos and create a discussion around it.  It is important to share your videos outside the realm of YouTube. There are endless possibilities on forums and other types of online communities.

3. Build Subscriber Base
   
   

Just as celebrities need fans, video owners need viewers and subscribers as well. They are the ones who will see your news feed such as video likes, favorites and new uploads. And you can’t gather a lot of these people if you have crappy video content with a sorry number of YouTube views, or if you don’t do the next strategy below.

4. Respond
   
   

This strategy is repeated in the nth time on video blogs but still there are those people who are too smug and complacent that they neglect or deliberately ignore comments. What are they thinking? Unless you are a popular music artist like Bieber, your videos need a voice or people will stop commenting on your other videos. This is not limited to YouTube. You need to respond to comments about your videos even on blogs or forums as well.

5. Link your videos
   
   

This is a very valuable strategy if you want to shine a light on your other videos in your video library. You can use annotations or place video links on the description box. You can put links to related videos or previous videos with a lot of YouTube views.

These tips have been written repeatedly, yet only a few tried to apply it to their YouTube plans. Maybe it’s no longer about strategies but a case of idleness.

A look back at a year of innovation in search management

[Cross-posted from the DoubleClick Search blog] 




About a year ago, we made a promise to make managing the world’s largest search campaigns more efficient and effective with the launch of DoubleClick Search V3 (DS3). Our goal was to give search marketers a simpler and faster way to manage campaigns, provide streamlined reporting and powerful campaign optimization tools - and do it through a completely rebuilt platform that runs on Google systems and infrastructure.

Today, we’d like to shine a light on how clients are using DoubleClick Search to run high-impact campaigns, and take a look at what’s yet to come. Looking back at the past year, a few things struck us:

• 6 of the 10 largest agencies now use DoubleClick Search(1)


• Agencies using DoubleClick Search see significant increases in efficiency, ranging from 25 to 60%.(2) That’s like suddenly finding another few hours in your workday.

We heard a lot from marketers and agencies about what they wanted most from their search management tools. This feedback has informed many of the key areas we’ve invested in over the last year:

Easy, intuitive campaign management
Managing large search campaigns can be complex. With DoubleClick Search, we wanted to give search teams a single point of access to their accounts across AdWords, adCenter, and Yahoo! Search Marketing. Gone are days of accessing multiple interfaces, and flipping to and from a variety of spreadsheets and one-off tools.

Better reporting, deeper insights
Today, you have access to more than 90 key metrics, which can be custom arranged and saved for a customized view of your campaigns. Reports that may have previously taken hours to run and consolidate now take minutes. Event-level reporting gives you granular data for every click and conversion your campaigns receives, such as keyword, query, time, and referral data, enabling you to better optimize your search campaigns.

Bid optimization, powered by Google
A search advertising campaign is only as good as the technology powering it. For example, a key driver of campaign performance is automating the keyword bidding process based on business goals. With the DoubleClick Search Performance Bidding Suite, this is an area where we’ve made significant and continuous investments. Whether you want to maximize clicks, conversions, return on ad spend, or a combination, you can achieve those goals at scale. Our Performance Bidding Suite is powered by algorithms with a unique ability to optimize based on same-day conversion data from Floodlight tags and are built to ensure that the clicks you pay for always maximize your campaign performance. In fact, after recent improvements to our system, 88% of DS3 clients saw a significant boost in campaign performance.(3)



2012 has more in store
The past year of work has set the foundation for exciting changes to come. Over the next few months, we’ll continue momentum by investing in:

• New search funnel tools to better understand a consumer’s path to conversion


• Allowing clients to integrate their own data sources to inform search decisions, and


• Tighter integration between DoubleClick Search and other ad properties for enhanced cross-channel optimization

We’re also further investing in improving our key areas of campaign management, reporting, and bidding efficiencies -- improvements we think will continue to drive great results for our partners in 2012 and beyond.

Stay tuned to the latest in DoubleClick Search by subscribing to our blog.

Posted by Ariel Bardin, Director of Product Management


1. Google internal data

2. Forrester Research, Inc.

3. Google internal data, March 2012