Google India launches SME partner programme

In an ongoing move to engage more deeply with small business owners, Google India has launched a Premier SME Partner programme in the country. The chosen partners will develop, launch and manage digital campaigns for small and medium businesses. These partners will offer end-to-end marketing solutions like search engine marketing, localised marketing solutions across Google properties, like AdWords. "Of the $ 1.2 billion SME advertising market in India, we expect at least $100 million will be digital advertising," said Rajan Anandan, Managing Director & VP Sales, Google India, adding that he expects most small businesses that advertise for the first time to choose digital advertising. "The ability to measure impact will drive this choice." For Google, advertising is the single largest source of revenues internationally. In 2011, 96% of its annual revenue of $37.9 billion came from advertising. India boasts of around 47 million SMEs, according to data from Zinnov. For Google, India offers the fastest growth in the small enterprise market prompting the internet company to increase its focus on the sector. In 2011, it launched 'India Get Your Business Online' programme, which offered free websites and hosting for small businesses. Just last week Google announced the Let's Talk Mo campaign, an initiative to help build mobile sites for internet content publishers ranging from individual bloggers to enterprises. For the SME Partner programme, which is part of a global initiative, Google India has shortlisted six partners Sokrati from Pune, Getit from Delhi, O3M Directional Marketing from Chennai, Effective Responses from Delhi, AdGlobal 360 from Delhi and ISPG Technologies from Bangalore. The technology major is planning to add another 24 partners by the end of the year. Google will provide the selected partners marketing and sales support, market research, training, technical and operational support.

Twitter tops Facebook in mobile ads: Survey

NEW YORK: Twitter is outpacing Facebook in US mobile advertising revenue this year, according to a survey released Thursday showing a market dominated by Google.

The report by the research firm eMarketer said Facebook, which just rolled out mobile ads for the first time this year, will likely overtake Twitter by 2013 but will not come close to matching Google.

The report estimated Google will take in 2012 mobile ad revenues of $1.4 billion, or more than half the total for the United States of $2.6 billion.

Internet radio group Pandora is expected to be second with $226 million, followed by Twitter with $129.7 million.

Facebook was expected to see some $72.7 million from mobile ads, just behind Apple's $75 million, the survey indicates.

But eMarketer forecast that Facebook will rise to number two in the US market by 2013 with $387 million in mobile ads and will take in $629 million by 2014.

Twitter gets revenues from mobile through so-called "promoted tweets," which make up a large portion of the group's revenues, eMarketer said.

Facebook gets most of its revenue from its Marketplace advertising platform, mostly ads that display on the right-hand side of Facebook's desktop experience, but not mobile.

Facebook recently began placing ads in the user's newsfeed, including on mobile devices.