Google’s Ads Strike a Chord

Google may or may not succeed in its bid to displace Microsoft Windows in the offices of the world, but the company appears to know how to make good advertising.

Data released today by Ace Metrix, a firm that measures the effectiveness of TV advertising using an online panel, show Google’s “Dear Sophie” spot resonated with consumers significantly better than all 130 new national TV spots that broke during the week ending May 6.

The spot, which shows a father using Google products (all accessed through Chrome) to create a scrapbook of his daughter's early years, was created by Google Creative Lab and agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty. It achieved a score of 661 from the Ace Metrix panel, compared with an average score of 553 for all other ads measured by the firm.

Also that week, as part of the same “The Web is what you make it” campaign, Google released an anti-bullying spot called “It gets better.” This one also scored well, coming in with 611.

Other ads released that week included spots for the Blackberry Playbook, which earned a score of 636, and the iPad 2, which scored 628. 

Google is relatively new to TV advertising, but so far so good. The company’s first foray was in the 2009 Super Bowl with “Parisian Love.” Despite, or perhaps because of, its simplicity and poignancy, that spot was thought by many to have been the best ad that ran during that year’s game. That spot was produced in-house by Google Creative Lab.