Discussing free expression at Internet at Liberty 2010

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It's not often that we get to step out of our everyday jobs and spend extended time engaging in global conversations about one of our fundamental values at Google: ensuring access to information. For three days last week in the Hungarian capital, Budapest, we had that chance when more than 300 bloggers, activists, academics, government officials and representatives of non-profits and business convened for "Internet at Liberty 2010." The conference, which we co-hosted with the Central European University, focused on "the promise and peril of online free expression" and the role of individuals, corporations and government in protecting free expression online. The conference drew participants from 74 countries, including many from places where free expression is constantly under threat—such as Kazakhstan, Tunisia and Zimbabwe. It drew a large contingent of bloggers and activists from the Middle East and representatives from both the Iranian and Chinese diasporas. Our liveblog of the conference was followed by more than 3.3 million people around the world. The issues at the heart of the gathering—and the challenges faced by free expression advocates the world over, were highlighted by our senior vice president, David Drummond, when in his opening remarks to the conference he quoted an email from an activist who could not obtain permission to attend "Internet at Liberty." The activist wrote: Everywhere I turned, I was only talking to a repetition of the same monomaniac mind where all the keywords around the conference were defined as dangerous and forbidden: 'liberty,' 'access,' 'Internet,' 'Google,' and even such simple words as 'university,' 'conference' and 'Europe.' Upon a second investigation, I realized that they are not afraid of these things because of their intrinsic identity, but because they can transform me from a passive and obedient member of the mass to a free, critical, creative and active citizen. Also at the conference, we introduced Google Transparency Report, an interactive online site that allows users to see where governments are demanding that we remove content and where Google services are being blocked. (Read more in our blog post.) Other sessions included a debate on the question, "Is the potential of the Internet as a force for positive political change being oversold?" and workshops offering practical education and tools for lobbying governments on key issues. Visit our website for the conference, which we plan to turn into a discussion and action forum for those who attended the conference and—we hope—thousands more. Our aim is to bring together people who share the common goal of promoting free expression on the Internet. We want to build constituencies behind key initiatives including helping individuals protect themselves online; promoting corporate and government transparency; finding the right balance between privacy and free expression; and making sure that platforms like Google aren't held liable for content they host. We're committed to reaching far beyond the results of the Budapest conference and the banks of the Danube to help ensure that online free expression, like the Internet itself, knows no borders. Posted by Bob Boorstin, Director, Public Policy

What does the future of display advertising look like?

This afternoon, we gave a keynote address at the Interactive Advertising Bureau's MIXX Conference in New York, entitled "Display 2015: Smart and Sexy." As you know by now, we're investing significantly to make display advertising better for users, advertisers and publishers. Display advertising really is at the heart of what we're doing at Google these days. 99 percent of our top 1,000 clients are now running campaigns on the Google Display Network. And last year, they increased their spending on display advertising by over 75 percent. Today, we explained why we think display advertising is about to go through the biggest and most important revolution in its history. We made seven predictions about where display advertising will be in 2015: 50 percent of ad campaigns will include video ads bought on a cost-per-view basis (that means that the user will choose whether to watch the ad or not, and the advertiser will only pay if the user watches). That's up from very little today. Today, advertisers are starting to deliver ads that are tailored to particular audiences. Many are using real-time bidding technology, so that they can bid on the ad space that they think is most valuable. In 2015, 50 percent of these ads will be bought using this real-time technology. With smartphone growth skyrocketing, mobile is going be the number one screen through which users engage with advertisers' digital brands. Today, the "click" is the most important way that advertisers measure their display ad campaigns, but it's not always the best measure—especially if an ad campaign is designed to boost things like brand awareness or recall. With new measurement technologies emerging, in five years, there will be five metrics that advertisers commonly regard as more important than the click. Just like most news articles on the web today can be commented on, shared, discussed, subscribed to and recommended, in 2015, 75 percent of ads on the web will be "social" in nature—across dozens of formats, sites and social communities. Rich media formats work. They enable great creativity and interaction between users and advertisers, but today they only represent about 6 percent of total display ad impressions. That will increase to 50 percent, for brand-building ad campaigns. All the investments that are making display advertising smarter and sexier will help publishers increase their revenues. Display advertising is going to grow to a $50 billion industry in five years. We also wanted to visualize the face of the display advertising revolution, so we demonstrated four exciting new technologies: We demonstrated some new video ad formats we've been testing on YouTube that we're calling "TrueView." These will roll out later this year. These ad formats give people the option to skip an ad if they don't want to watch, or to choose from multiple ads the one they want to watch. Importantly, advertisers only pay if the user chooses to watch their ad. We showed some of the things that are becoming possible with our new Teracent technology. This technology can dynamically alter the creative elements of an ad in real-time to make it more relevant and effective, depending on factors like geographic location, language, the content of the website and the time of day. You might be familiar with Google Goggles, a way to search the web on mobile devices just by taking a picture. We gave a preview of some experimental uses of Google Goggles that could one day enable advertisers to deliver great display ads to users. Imagine pointing your phone's camera at an ad for a car in a magazine, and having the car appear in 3D in your mobile device. Or pointing at a movie poster and having the movie trailer play in the device, right in your hand. No QR codes, no downloads! We even showed a fun example of what rich media can do—our speech was broadcast live in a number of expandable ad units across the web, and was updated with tweets in real time. We think that display advertising has a pretty exciting future and we'll continue our work to make it even better. Thanks to everyone who came along to watch in New York, or who tuned in online. If you didn't get a chance to see it, our speech will be available here later today. Posted by Neal Mohan, Vice President of Product Management and Barry Salzman, Managing Director of Media & Platforms - Americas