Google has announced on the Inside Adwords blog the launch of a display advert creation tool in the US and Canada in an obvious attempt to broaden its market for display advertisers and in the hope of expanding its share in this area. The availability of ads for the use in display and placement campaigns is often a barrier to entry for the smaller companies as a full professional creative suite can cost thousands of pounds. By providing this tool they will be hoping to broaden the reach of their placement network and steel some market share from the big publisher sites such as Yahoo!, AOL and MSN.
The tool looks remarkably easy to use in the video demonstration, as you would expect, as it works on a simple standard template with upload functionality for a logo, selling point and call to action. The background css is fully editable to create the appropriate colour scheme and the tool creates ads in four standard sizes. This is a smart move from Google and they have followed the simple model of Adwords which will appeal to the less savvy SME market.
It is only available in the US and Canada at the moment but once proven successful a UK launch is inevitable as Google aims to try and win the battle to become more than just a search engine and more of an advertising platform.