Google Uses Outdoor Billboards To Promote Goog411

Photo by Mike Blumenthal.
Used with permission.

Mike Blumenthal took a picture of

a billboard ad in upstate New York for Google’s free directory assistance
alternative, Goog411. This is
interesting and amusing for a number of reasons.

The company, which has historically not marketed its products (although that
is changing), is using a very traditional ad medium to promote its
non-traditional local voice search offering. However, people will see this when
they’re driving in their cars, which is one of the expected use cases. Another
interesting thing is the location, a relatively obscure rural area:

Photo by Mike Blumenthal.
Used with permission.

But perhaps that’s also quite intentional, to test a campaign and see if it
drives traffic, so to speak.

Postscript: Valleywag picked this up and thinks it’s not a test of the efficacy of traditional media to build an audience for Goog411. Rather they think:

Google is interested in expanding into all forms of advertising, including the $7 billion outdoor market — billboards, that is. Perhaps it’s purchased some billboard space, in the hopes of using its dynamic, auction-based ad-selling system to resell it at a profit. Until it finds buyers, it may be using the billboards to promote its own services.

Clearly Google has an out-of-home strategy (some discussion here), but I’m not sure this is its introduction.