Retail in Asia

In Trends

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW : Mel Silva on the best advertising content

Mel Silva

Retail in Asia joined Growing with Google APAC Press Event 2018 in Singapore.

Google representatives provided an overview on how today’s connected world is the result of a digital transformation, which enables anyone with a smartphone to build a business and reach an audience of billions worldwide.

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The focus was on mobile as all over the world, especially in developing countries, smartphones are usually the first device available to anyone.

Smartphones and all digital device host ecosystems that spread benefits across users, creators, publishers, developers, and businesses. Billions of people search for goods to buy through smartphones, and businesses use those platforms to optimize their reach out and make people’s life easier.

Google presented the wide range of solutions available for different business stakeholders: small businesses to connect with consumers; content creators to reach larger audiences; publishers to monetize their content and promote themselves; developers to connect to billions of people in a booming global app economy.
Businesses of all types can use the Cloud to increase productivity of their teams and the efficiency of their services.

Karim Temsamani, President, Google Asia-Pacific, discussed the interconnected relationships between different groups such as consumers, advertisers and partners like app developers and hardware manufacturers.”

Retail in Asia met Mel Silva, Managing Director, Go-To-Market Strategy and Operations, Asia-Pacific, for a short interview. She explained how ads keep the internet the free and open place it is today, and therefore are essential for the survival of the ecosystem. “Advertising funds the services we use online every day – everything from news, video, mobile apps, email – as well as all of Google’s services,” she said.

During the interview, the focus was more on emerging markets and how marketers in those countries can leverage on Google platform. As countries in SEA, and Indonesia and India specifically are expected to grow in the next few years generating millions of new internet users, Google is definitely experimenting ways to understand their behavior to tailor its products.

As Mel highlighted, Google as platform is ready to satisfy the needs of marketers in SEA, however, in the next coming years, investments will be moved towards activities aimed to engage with advertising and creative industries in order to get them to use the platform.

YouTube, for example, has gained incredible success due to the fact that video content has become popular and popular recently. Search results in SEA and India are positive and promising for a future in engagement; however, the actual content production has still room for development.

Users in those areas have not fully explored the digital capabilities of the platforms available.

As per retailers in those areas, the first way to utilize Google is to understand how to enhance the omnichannel experience. In Singapore, Google products for retail have been already incorporated in many businesses. Businesses can check the omnichannel traffic, instead of splitting their numbers into offline and online. This is something that, as Mel pointed out, is happening in more mature markets, where business focus on the interaction between offline and online.

Simply using Google to set up the address of the business, telephone number, is already a huge achievements in some countries, as while going global there is a shared understanding that each country has its own specificity and it needs to be treated case by case. As Google aim is to make businesses fast and more agile within the e-commerce diversity as well, it is important to understand the online consumer behavior as well and data are key to look at patterns.

Mel’s specific role is to engage marketers and advertisers into a more conscious use of Google tools to generate an effective content, and at the same time use Google tools to measure the ROI on this content.

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Google started as a search engine. But today its aim is to provide platforms with a “growth engine” for other companies. The whole business rests on keeping the ecosystems an open, safe, and trustworthy place where businesses can innovate and grow.

The day ended with a tour of Google Singapore office, designed to match Google values.