brand-e

Advertising art and copy have a new partner, technology, and it’s revolutionising every part of the communications business, argue Torrence Boone, Cecelia Wogan-Silva and Blair Dore in the latest issue of Google’s Think Quarterly.

Google’s social network, Google+, just got far prettier, and now looks nothing like the old Google+. For one, instead of static icons across the top, there’s a dynamic ribbon of applications. There are full-bleed photos and videos, a stream of conversation cards to make it easier to scan and join discussions, plus an ‘activity drawer’ which highlights the community around users’ content.

A whopping 82% of Americans have a favourable opinion of Google, while 53% express a strongly favourable opinion of the giant search brand, according to a ABC News/Washington Post poll conducted by Langer Research Associates. And Apple? Seventy-four percent see the brand favourably, but it lags Google by 16 points when it comes to strong devotees.

Watch out Facebook and Google+, here comes Chatisfaction. What is it? It’s a new social network with an emphasis on privacy and elite branding, writes Maria Stadtmueller. “Most social networks aren’t doing anything really innovative or different – they take information from the end user and sell that information to third parties who in turn bombard them with advertisements,” says Mike Pike, CEO of Chatisfaction.

Google has patented background noise and ambience to enable it to provide advertising ‘based on environmental conditions’. Using tech embedded in users’ mobile phones, the search giant would be able to pick up data on local sound, temperature and humidity and then deliver targeted ads for, say, music based on which songs consumers’ phones are able to detect, or air conditioners in hot weather conditions.

Sixty three percent of the world’s online users will visit a social network at least once a month in 2012, rising to almost 68% in 2013, and 71% in 2014 – this corresponds to one out of every five people in the world using a social network this year, and one in every four doing so in 2014, according to a new eMarketer report, Worldwide Social Network Usage: Market Size & Growth Forecast.

Google is talking about Project Re:Brief. What is it? Well, last year, the search giant partnered with four brands  - Coca-Cola, Volvo, Alka-Seltzer and Avis – in an advertising experiment and ended up re-imagining and remaking the most iconic ads from the sixties and seventies with the help of today’s cool technology, but led by the creatives who made those original campaigns.

Google wants to more than double the number of people using Google+ this year. The social networking platform, launched in June 2011, currently has more than 100 million users. The search giant says growth of Google+ has surpassed any estimates the company had for the new social network.