Google launches real-time charm offensive for brands ahead of this year’s Super Bowl

With the Super Bowl just over two weeks away, Google has launched a new real-time advertising platform as it aims to win over brands and match similar services already on offer at rivals such as Twitter.

Google’s ‘real-time ads’ platform allows brands to trigger messaging and promotions around events – such as the Super Bowl or Uefa Champions League – instantly, with the format encompassing inventory on YouTube and Google’s display network.

Although still in beta stage, Google already has website-building brand Wix signed up as the tech giant tests out the real-time platform during this year’s Super Bowl.

US media brand Comcast will also tap into Google’s real-time ads during an “upcoming awards show” thought to be the Oscars.

Google said it plans to roll out the service “more broadly” later this year. It will allow brands to: “instantly run an ad across YouTube, hundreds of thousands of apps, and over two million sites in our Google Display Network with a message that ties directly to the big moment consumers just experienced.”

Speaking at its press launch yesterday, Tara Walpert Levy, MD of agency sales at Google said Google’s reach for real-time advertising was “incomparable”.

She added that Google’s offering is unique as it offers the ability to complete immediate, dynamic ad insertion in both video and display inventory with “meaningful reach among consumers”.

Competing with Twitter

“The goal for marketers and being able to react real-time in a way that really resonates with folks around big cultural events and the micro-moments that go with them is common across many platforms,” she said.

“What’s unique about real-time ads is the ability to do that in video and display with the reach and scale and power of the platform, which as you find out is relatively incomparable.”

Google will allow advertisers to first pre-plan and upload the creative they want to use before pushing out the content in real time.

The service will be competing with rival Twitter’s update that was integrated into the social media platform last summer.

Twitter’ Live Moments allow users to follow events instead of just people, with a ‘live’ tab with a lightning bolt icon appearing within the mobile app and by clicking on the icon users are taken to a list of events curated by a team of editors.

Each event includes tweets, photos, GIFs and videos around a particular topic such as music festivals, sports tournaments or breaking news such as earthquakes and riots.

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