By Star Chang, posted Nov 14, 2011 at 12:17 PM, 524 views,

Google’s ‘Creative Sandbox’ In Shanghai, China

Ok, so what is Google’s ‘Creative Sandbox’ ? It is a Google’s technology event show in which Google products are demonstrated for industry’s designers and marketing executives on advertising. The show has already hosted in many global cities like New York, San Francisco, new Delhi, Brazil and Sydney, and the event is not opened for public. The show will present Google’s latest technology which can contribute creative idea and inspiration to advertising. This year, Google has decided to bring its ‘Creative Sandbox’ event to Shanghai, China. But due to restriction from the Chinese government on internet freedom, most of the Google’s product are not ‘present’ in China. It is interesting to see how Google communicates with their Chinese business partners and local ad agency under the atmosphere of communism…

The ‘Creative Sandbox’ event aims to introduce the new tools and applications developed by Google and how they can be used by the advertising industry. It will not only be an introduction but an interactive session attempting to immerse the participants in an environment filled with Google’s products. There were key notes and presentations from Googlers and discussion of case studies on advertising campaigns carried out on Google’s platforms. The Chinese attendees also had a chance to view the experiments from the Google Creative Lab, Chrome Experiments, YouTube campaigns and products, Google+ social network and other mobile applications which used on Android.

The very fact that such an event is happening in Shanghai points towards the rising importance of the China online advertising market for Google. Last year, Google China’s top 50 advertisers doubled their display advertising spending, and 97% of the top 100 advertisers placed display advertising online. Those advertise mainly coming from text ads, mobiles, rich media and video. The faith is founded on the fact that ad display currently generates 6 billion hits per day and covers 96% of Chinese internet users. Google believes that the revenue of display advertising will reach $200 billion in the next three years, and its potential to generate revenue is greater than the search engine.

Basic Internet search functions will no longer be the core business for Google in China as mobile Internet is accelerating in China market now. That means an even greater market for Google is bound to be in mobile advertising. Currently in the Chinese market, apart from Apple’s iPad, almost anything referred to as “pad” or “tablet” uses Google’s Android OS. In addition to iPhone, the majority of smart phones are equipped with Android’s 2.3 version. Google seems to have found a major new way to break through in China. Not only does it avoid web censorship dilemma, its new strategy opens an opportunity for Google to capture the booming online advertising market.

Source: PCHOME Blog (in Chinese), economic observer