Google pushes mobile to offline South Africans

Reading the (offline) newspaper this weekend, it was interesting to see a selection of Google adverts across various sections. For instance, in Independent Newspapers’ Travel 2008 supplement, there’s an advert with the caption “Find flights to Johannesburg on your mobile”. The advert features a picture of a mobile phone, in this case the Nokia N95, with search results that users would get if they typed that keyword phrase into Google.co.za Mobile. It then provides instructions on how to access Google mobile on that particular model of phone.

These ads are interesting for several reasons. Firstly, they represent an interesting marketing strategy for Google in countries like South Africa, where the reach of the mobile web reach far exceeds that of the PC web (accessing the web from your computer). Google is essentially targeting consumers who don’t access the web at all, access it from their office only, or access it from internet cafés. It is now reinforcing the notion that Google can come with you wherever you are and wherever you go. And I think it will be successful in getting this message across to South Africans who have not realised this.

Secondly, these Google adverts are contextual as only offline ads can be: the content of the ads matches the section that they are in and the readership of the newspaper. The ad I noted above was in a Cape Town paper, and thus featured the keywords “flights to Johannesburg”. Google here is subtly reinforcing its business model of contextual keyword-based advertising, and even more subtly educating offline consumers — soon to be Google mobile addicts — about the efficiencies of finding what you want through keyword-based adverts.

Thirdly, Google is co-branding itself with well-known and trusted brands in South Africa such as Nokia and Sony Ericsson. It is doing this to leverage off this association and the trust that the South African market has with these brands.

Finally, and this is mere speculation, Google is slowly looking towards extending its Google Print Ads service to markets other than the US. In case you don’t know, Google has an ingenious plan to fill unsold ad inventory in offline newspapers using its efficient and effective Adwords system. It will take a while for this service to reach South Africa (it hasn’t even got out of the US yet), but Google’s placements of its own offline ads is certainly getting local publishers familiar with the company, its technology and the potential to monetise and fill unsold inventory. It’s not a great leap of logic to see Google moving from placing its own ads towards placing Google users’ ads.