But while it has a solid foothold in Europe, the company does not dismiss the competition. "We're aware of all of our competitors regardless if they are overseas, and we take these competitors seriously," Olson said. "We've been doing this longer and are bigger than anyone else doing paid search -- we offer superior economics, service and product quality than anyone else." For its part, Google is revving up ad sales overseas. It has sites translated into 82 different languages. Google quietly opened offices in London and Tokyo last year. In recent months, it opened annexes in Germany and France. In addition, according to its site, it is hiring eight advertising sales executives in France, Germany and England. Last month, the company introduced AdWords Select in those six markets, publicising the cost-per-click program to visitors of those foreign language homepages. With the release, the company is now allowing overseas marketers to participate in cost-per-click advertising with support for local currency. The release of the technology was a "soft launch," said Google spokesman David Krane. "AdWords Select brings one of our recently introduced advertising products to our customers in their own language and currency." "We're ramping up that technology and we're adding staff in these markets to better serve advertisers and partners," Krane said. He added that the basic AdWords program, a pay-by-credit-card service, was already available in Germany during the past year. German marketers can now use the pay-for-performance system. Efforts paying off
Some sales efforts are already paying off. Earlier this month, Google inked an advertising deal worth an estimated $1.55 million with Lloyds TSB Insurance, a top London banking and insurance company. Lloyds is paying for placement in search results related to more than 1,000 insurance-related keywords over the coming year. The deal highlights advertisers' embrace of search marketing, widely noted as one of the most important publicity tools on the Net because of its direct connection with consumers seeking out products and services. "From the perspective of the advertiser, search engines are becoming increasingly important to target consumers because the general public filters advertising deliberately," said Damian Burns, digital account director with London-based Zenith Interactive Solutions, who brokered the deal between Lloyds and Google. "With people in research mode, you can target (them) in a relevant listing and their propensity to listen will be far higher." Burns said all of his company's ad clients have relationships with Overture and Espotting.com, a UK-based paid search provider. Google has only recently caught on, in part because of the company's UK audience of about 7.5 million, according to measurement company Nielsen/NetRatings. "The learning from Google and performance has led us to sign up with them and now it's snowballing," Burns said. So far, Google has signed on BT, British Airways, Ford Motor and Virgin as UK advertisers. Overture's UK advertisers include many of the same, such as British Airways, Thomas Cook, Virgin and Lloyds TSB Insurance. Still, Google has yet to publicly announce any licensing customers in the European market. Its first international licensee for syndicated advertising was Sympatico, a Lycos-owned Internet property in Canada. Canadian advertisers can sign up with AdWords to show commercial results only to the country's residents. For Google, branching into ad sales in foreign markets is relatively simple compared with the efforts needed by other US Net operations such as Yahoo! and Overture, industry experts say. Google already has a big audience looking for answers to search queries in countries around the world. With a Google sales staff and automated tools for advertisers to place listings, marketers can reach an already robust audience looking for specific items online. But for Overture, which does not host its own destination Web site, venturing into new markets requires more legwork. The company must find partners such as Internet service providers, which are interested in commercial search listings, to attract advertisers in a given marketplace. While the company already has multiple top European partners, it must continue to forge those relationships to stay competitive, analysts say. "If Overture wants to go into Spain, they have to line up the partners and advertisers," said Danny Sullivan, editor of Searchenginewatch.com. "But Google already has plenty of people using the search engine -- they don't have to build up a network in countries around the world, they already have people around the world using them." "If Google gets partners in international countries, it's just the icing on the cake. For Overture, they need to bake the cake from the very beginning," Sullivan said. For its part, Google intends to keep growing. "The plan is to bring all of Google's products and services to all major markets around the world over time," Krane said.
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