-->The way people consume content is changing. For the first time, an entire generation has grown up watching content on their own terms. This generation is defined by the Internet, mobile, and social - consuming content when and where they want. Nielsen calls this group Generation C because they are not just defined by their age group, but by their connected behavior. On YouTube, this generation thrives on 4Cs:

• Connection - Gen C watches YouTube on all screens, constantly switching between devices.
• Creation - Gen C is deeply engaged with online video, watching, creating and uploading videos on YouTube.
• Community - Gen C thrive on community, defining what’s popular on YouTube by sharing videos with friends and family.
• Curation - Gen C is made up of expert curators who care about finding content that matters to them.

As we’ve said before, we’ve entered the next wave of digital marketing, as major brands like L’Oreal, Audi and Kay Jewelers embrace digital media and make it a core part of their marketing strategy.  We’ve seen a 65 percent increase in the last quarter alone in the number of brand advertisers using our brand formats and buying tools.

This influx of brand investment is translating into meaningful results for digital publishers.

• We looked at the 50 top publishers that enable brand-friendly ad formats on their sites.  Over the past three months we found that, on average, they experienced a CPM increase of 2x or more when running these engagement-driven ads, such as our Lightbox ad, which expands to a full page only after a user has deliberately engaged with the ad. “We've seen CPM increases of more than 3X, and our advertisers love the large canvas and pay for engagement model," says Rich Dredge, Answers.com's Chief Revenue Officer.

• We’ve seen an overall increase in higher CPMs across our exchange -- in the U.S., CPMs over $5 have increased 24% year-over-year while those over $10 have increased 23% year-over-year. Brand spend is a critical piece of these increases.

Fueling brand adoption
To continue this momentum, we’ve been investing in a suite of brand solutions over the past year to help these advertisers make the most of what digital marketing has to offer:

• New Ways to Buy -- Last year, we introduced Active View, offering for the first time the ability to not only measure whether ads are viewable, but actually buy based on it. Brands are able to “reserve” a guaranteed number of impressions on brand-friendly sites across the web -- and they pay only for impressions that are viewed.

◦ Over the past year, the number of advertisers using the reserve option has increased fourfold.
◦ Nearly two-thirds of those are Ad Age top 100 brands.

• New Ways to Engage -- Last year, we introduced a new family of brand-friendly, engagement-focused ad formats. Engagement formats are already showing terrific early returns.  For example, L’ORÉAL PARiS was one of the first brands to run a campaign using engagement ads. They ran an expandable ad in Germany as part of their “Beauty Minute” campaign and found that 30% of those who expanded the ad watched the entire 30-second embedded video.

• New Ways to Measure -- We’re committed to providing meaningful metrics for brands, measurement that goes beyond just clicks and conversions. Earlier this week, we introduced Brand Lift in AdWords, which will enable marketers to run surveys along with their ad campaigns, to determine how their ads helped their marketing objectives (i.e., whether their ads helped build awareness, increased favorability towards their brand, etc.). Brand Lift complements our other investments in brand measurement, like Active View and Active GRP.

Digital media represents an amazing opportunity for both brands and publishers, bringing together sight, sound, motion, interactivity and measurement in ways we’ve never seen before.

Over the coming year, we’ll be continuing to invest in our products and systems that will help brands thrive in the digital space, as well as help publishers capitalize on the shift...so stay tuned for more to come.

-- Authored by Neal Mohan

Today marks the debut of the new Think Insights, Google’s hub for marketing insights and inspiration for advertisers and agencies. On google.com/think, you can learn about the latest research in digital marketing, be inspired by creative brand campaigns, and find useful products and tools. You’ll also find industry-leading case studies and Google’s latest research, strategic perspectives, interviews with innovators and experts and more—all to help you make the most of the web.

Every week, we’ll feature content that spans industries and interests. Here’s a snapshot of our top stories:

• In Understanding the Full Value of Mobile, learn how sporting goods industry leader adidas worked with digital performance agency iProspect to understand how mobile drives value beyond mobile commerce, particularly in-store sales. The campaign proved that mobile brought a 680% incremental increase in ROI.

• The Hyundai Elantra: Driveway Decision Maker campaign lets you watch your favorite Hyundai model drive right to your driveway, using a combination of Google Maps Street View, projection mapping and real-time 3D animation.

• YouTube Ads Leaderboard shows which YouTube ads most moved audiences this month, through a winning combination of savvy promotion and smart creative strategy; a new list is featured each month.

In our Perspectives section, we tap our own experts—as well as heads of industry, digital visionaries and Wharton professors—to lend their insights and analyses on the topics that matter most to marketers. The Product & Tools section contains information about our products and advertising platforms, as well as Planning Tools like the Brand Impressions tool and the popular Real-Time Insights finder.

We built google.com/think to help you do it all—stay up-to-date on the latest in digital marketing, arm yourself with data to support your business cases and create inspiring campaigns. Explore the site now, and if you like what you discover, don't forget to subscribe to our Think Letter for a monthly round-up of our most popular content.

Authored by Lisa Gevelber, Head of Global Ads Marketing 

After six weeks of intense game play across the agency world, the Ping-Pong Hangout agency face-off has come to a close. There was fierce competition from all 48 agencies and more than 25,000 games played. The winner: Big Spaceship who played their way to the top with more than 3,400 wins. Congratulations to 360i, Carrot Creative, The Barbarian Group and Deep Focus who swept the remaining top five spots.

Though the competition is over, you can still join the fun on CreativeSandbox.com and try out the Ping-Pong Hangout. Using this Hangout app, you can play a game of Ping-Pong with an opponent using your face to control the paddle. The site also features a Guidebook that covers the basics of Hangouts, Hangout apps and ideas for use cases. Want more? Check out the recording of the Hangout with the agencies behind the game or grab our one sheeter to get started.



The Ping-Pong Hangout is fun stuff, but its the technology behind it that’s most impressive: the Google+ Hangouts API. The API can help you build deep, engaging and unique experiences for Hangouts. We’ve also found that the average duration of a Hangout increases by 2.5 times when participants use an app. The best part? Anything you can put in an iFrame, you can add to a Hangout app.

Interested in working on a Hangout app for your client? We have plenty of resources to help you get started. Check out our getting-started guide for the Hangouts API, get some inspiration from the Hangout Apps Showcase or ask questions of the Google+ Developers team in their Hangout office hours on Tuesdays at 2:30pm PT.

Posted by Lindsay Rumer, Google+ Marketing

Last year, we started a program to partner with advertisers and agencies to re-imagine how brands tell stories in a connected world. Project Re: Brief set out to recreate some of the advertising industry’s most iconic, classic campaigns using the latest technology tools. This year we’re expanding that program to work with some of today’s most iconic brands and innovative marketers, in our new project: Art, Copy & Code.

Art, Copy & Code is a series of projects and experiments to show how creativity and technology can work hand in hand. Some of these will include familiar brands like Volkswagen, Burberry and adidas—projects developed in partnership with their creative teams and agencies. Others will be creative experiments with innovative filmmakers, creative directors and technologists to explore how brands can connect with consumers through a whole range of digital tools—including ads, mobile apps and social experiences. Our first partner project is a new social driving experience—Volkswagen Smileage.

Building off their 2012 campaign, “It’s not the miles, it’s how you live them,” Volkswagen Smileage is a mobile app and web service that aims to add a little bit of fun to every drive, from your daily commutes to holiday road trips. The app measures the fun factor of each trip using a metric called “smileage,” based on signals like weather, traffic, location, time and social interactions (e.g.,  a long drive on a sunny Saturday afternoon might accumulate more smileage than a morning commute in the snow). You can use it with any car, not just Volkswagens.

Powered by the new Google+ sign-in, you can choose to share Smileage experience with friends and family. For example, during a road trip, photos and videos taken by you and your co-passengers can be automatically added to a live interactive map. The inspiration for the service came from a recent study showing that every day, 144 million Americans on average spend 52 minutes in a car—76 percent of them alone. We wanted to make that time a more shareable experience. Volkswagen Smileage will be available soon in beta—you can sign up on this webpage for early access.



We’ll have many more experiments to share in the Art, Copy & Code project soon—subscribe for updates at ArtCopyCode.com. We’re committed to investing in technology and tools over the long term to help brands and their agencies succeed not just today, but in a digital future that will look very different.

If you’re planning on attending SXSW, stop by the Google Playground on March 9 to see demos of these experiments, or attend our talk on March 10.

-- signed by Aman Govil, Art, Copy & Code Project Lead

If you’ve looked around YouTube today, you’ll likely notice that many channels are sporting a brand new design. Today we’re excited to extend the opportunity to use the new layout – called One Channel since your channel will have a consistent design and branding across screens – to all advertisers.

This new design will give you powerful tools to transform your YouTube channel into a home base for building audience love and loyalty. Here are just a few of the benefits of the One Channel layout:

One Channel, all screens: with the new design, your channel will have a consistent, beautiful look and feel regardless of whether visitors view it on desktop, tablet, mobile or TV. We’ve made it easy to upload brand assets so that they look amazing on any device, and we’ll continue to work to make your channel art look especially beautiful on mobile in the coming weeks.


Curate your content with Sections: the new channel design gives you flexibility to arrange your videos however you please without having to create sub-channels or pages. Want to show your greatest hits at the top? Sections let you do just that, and gives you control over what visitors see when they check out your channel.

Welcome non-subscribers (and invite them to subscribe!): you can now feature a channel trailer that only appears to visitors that aren’t yet subscribers to your channel. Tell them your story to invite them in!

In good company – connect your associated channels: you can now link to relevant channels directly from your page. Here Intel is using this feature to promote their international channels (and check out more best practices direct from Intel here). If you haven’t subscribed to Intel’s channel, perhaps checking out their “Harlem Shake” video will change your mind.

Your channel is always just one click away: with each user’s guide appearing on every page of YouTube, your brand channel is always at their fingertips.

People who subscribe to channels on YouTube tend to watch more content, more often than those who don’t – demonstrating the immense value of subscriptions for your brand. We hope you take advantage of the new One Channel design to continue to build your audience on YouTube!