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Google and the WPP Group have teamed up
to create a new research program to improve understanding and
practices in online marketing, and to better understand the relationship between online and offline media.
The Google and WPP Marketing Research Awards Program
expects to
support up to 12 awards in the range from $50,000 to $70,000. Awards
will be in the form of unrestricted gifts to academic institutions,
under the names of the researchers who submitted the proposal. Award
recipients will be invited to participate in a meeting
highlighting work in this area and will be encouraged to make their
results available online and in professional publications.
Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Online and offline media interaction
- How does a brand establish a framework for assessing how
much should be spent online? How much advertising should be
directed at brand development versus specific click generation?
- How does offline media affect search and vice versa?
- What are the best models for mobile advertising?
- What are the appropriate metrics for comparing and contrasting online
and offline media performance?
- Is online media more effective for long tail products rather
than main stream brands?
- How should the total advertising budget for a firm change
with new digital media availabilities?
- How do you set digital advertising budgets and tactics when
in intensively competitive product categories?
- Relevance and effectiveness measurement
- How do consumers determine what is relevant? What tradeoff
do they see between providing information and receiving
relevant advertising?
- What are good guidelines for moving traditional video spots
from broadcast to broadband?
- What is the causal relationship between brand health and
search success? And what is the link between search and
sales? How does search contribute to word of mouth
recommendation?
- What metrics can be used to measure causal effect of a
campaign on purchase both online and offline? What is the
ROI for digital media?
- How can banner ads be more effective?
- How can you best coordinate search and banner ads?
- Are traditional banner ads (print format) more or less
effective than ads aimed at providing information to help
make a specific decision?
- How do you model the consumer response to digital
advertising in social networks or mobile media?
- Audience types and engagement
- What do we know and what more do we need to know about
on-line audiences?
- How can advertisers participate meaningfully in increasingly
personalized services such as specific verticals?
- How can advertisers be welcome in social networks?
These topics are examples of issues where research would be useful. We
encourage creative theory development and empirical analysis to help
solve marketing and advertising problems, so a wide range of
methodologies and approaches are welcome. In order to facilitate
research in these areas, Google and WPP will make available useful
marketing data to qualified academics conducting research in this
program. Google provides
Insights for Search,
Google Trends for Websites,
and the Google Trifecta (including
Google Webmaster Tools,
Google Analytics
and Google Website Optimizer). WPP will
provide access to proprietary data from its companies including BrandZ,
Market Norms, TGI as well as media data and research generated at
GroupM and The Kantar Group.
Further description of the available data,
sample datasets and formats are available. If the proposed research can
benefit from advertiser-controlled sources such as comprehensive
marketing, tracking and research data, WPP clients may be contacted to
grant permission for such information release.
Applying for a Marketing Research Award
To apply for a Google and WPP Marketing
Research award, please follow these general guidelines:
- Eligibility: Full-time faculty members from universities
worldwide may submit proposals describing the research they
wish to pursue.
- Format: 3-page proposal in PDF format must include the
following items/sections:
- Proposal Title
- Principal Investigator (PI) full name, contact
information (postal address, e-Mail, phone),
affiliation (University, School, College and/or
Department)
- Research Abstract and Goals
- One or two keywords that best captures the principal focus of
proposed research
- Technical description
- Expected outcomes and results
- Budget explanation or justification
- Award range: $50k-$70k
- Send proposal in PDF format as an email attachment to
marketing-awards@google.com.
- Deadline for proposal submission is December 30, 2008 @ 5:00
PM PST.
- Proposals will be reviewed by early to mid-January 2009.
- Grant awards/funding will be made available in February 2009.
- Recipients will be invited to attend a conference in Fall 2009 (Sept/Oct) where they can share their preliminary findings.
Information about Google Research
If you have any questions about this program, please consult the
frequently asked questions page and if the answer to your question is not available there,
please email marketing-awards@google.com
If you'd like to find out more about some the research done in the
past by Google's technical staff, you can visit the
Google Research Site. Among other
things you will find a
list of papers and books by Googlers on a wide range of topics.
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