Google on a mission to googlise Asia

Hong Kong - Google has increased its investment in Asia and is committed to become a local product to turn Hong Kong into a large export-oriented platform for online marketers.

The world's largest online search engine Google shared its global missions with the press yesterday.

Daniel Alegre, VP of Google's sales and operation for the Asia-Pacific region, said Hong Kong is the fourth market in Asia after Tokyo, Sydney and Seoul, and the fact that it is export-oriented and made up of 300,000 small and medium-sized businesses fits well with the overall Google strategy.

"Our mission as you know is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible."

Google believes as the slowing economy has taken a toll on traditional advertising business, more marketers have cut down ad budget and turned to online advertising. Google is using this opportunity to help marketers maximise the return on investment of each advertising dollar they spend on Google's ad platform.

Alegre said advertising in tradition format-TVC-is time consuming and hard to track viewers' engagement.

"Whereas [with] Google, if you looking at a targeted market, you can create an advertising campaign with 24 hours, and it will provide marketers analytics and let them decide whether to increase or decrease spend because they get immediate result."

One of the core missions of Google is to make sure its local search targets at the right consumers and and provide them with what they are looking for. 

In reaction to the local market, the group has recently localized YouTube and the map application for Asian users, aiming to gain higher consumer acceptance. 

"Our leadership in Asia is not driven by competition," Algegre added, "It's the potential within the vast population that cannot be ignored."