Google Data

Here are the top highlights from this week's Google CPG industry newsletter. Happy Reading!

WHAT’S HOT

1. Think Quarterly: At Google, we aim to help people and organizations navigate a world gone digital. That's why we created Think Quarterly. We don’t want to review what’s happened; we want to prepare you for what happens next. For each issue, we tap our homegrown visionaries, plus heads of industry, innovators and experts, to lend their insights and outlooks on the digital future. We hope it gives a view into what drives us as a company and inspires those of you who lead the way. We hope you find the content engaging and insightful. Included are insights from Dennis Woodside on his vision for our industry, as well as SVP of Advertising, Susan Wojcicki’s Eight Principles for Innovation. Think Quarterly is very much an experiment, and like any other Google product we aim to iterate, so please let me know what you think. And if you like it, +1 it!

2. What Do You Love? Would you like to find out everything you can about the things you love in one place? Now you can. Check out What Do You Love? Type in something you love: monkeys, photography, or Merlot, whatever comes to mind. Enjoy.

3. New Tablet Targeting Options Now Available: You can find the new "Tablets with full browsers" targeting option under the Networks and devices section of the Settings tab within your AdWords account. Read more on the Inside AdWords blog here.

4. Google+ Project Update - Sparks: Remember when your Grandpa used to cut articles out of the paper and send them to you? That was nice. That’s kind of what Sparks does: looks for videos and articles it thinks you’ll like, so when you’re free, there’s always something to watch, read, and share.

GOOGLE NEWS

How brands can get started on Google+
Marketers shouldn't wait around to get started with Google+, writes Heidi Cohen. Even if Google won't let your brand carve out a page of its own, it's important for individual marketers to climb aboard, so they can start figuring out the site's features and check out how the potential audience is using the network. "As a marketer, it's critical to get onto Google+ and start kicking the social media tires," Cohen writes.

"Android is Top Mobile Operating System in the U.S., Says Nielsen" (ReadWriteWeb, July 28):

"Today Nielsen is reporting that Google's mobile operating system Android now has the largest smart phone operating system (OS) market share here in the U.S. The top three mobile OS's, according to this new data, are Android (39%), Apple's iOS (28%) and RIM (20%)."

MOBILE UPDATE

Brand marketers see a future in mobile
About half of brand marketers have mobile strategies but their spending remains minimal, with a majority planning to lay out less than $50,000 this year and only 7% budgeting more than $300,000, according to an IAB-sponsored survey of 300 top brand marketing executives. But 72% of those surveyed said they planned to boost mobile spending over the next two years, with branded mobile sites and display ads cited as two of the leading strategic components.