Google Inc.’s new 140,000-square-foot office on Jamboree Road in Irvine has become a key hub for the search giant’s push to link analytics and app development to drum up monetization opportunities for its bevy of advertisers.
Many of the software engineers inside the four-story glass building are charged with helping developers navigate gobs of data and bring timely analysis of their apps through simple clicks.
“Google is really investing in the mobile developer space,” said Russell Ketchum, who runs Google Analytics for Apps from the company’s Irvine office.
New Frontier
Call it a new frontier for the Mountain View-based company as apps become the primary destination for smartphone and other mobile device users.
In South Korea, for instance, consumers spend more time with apps than they do watching TV. Users around the world average more than 30 hours per month engaging with an app, according to Google.
The initiative is one of several in the works at Google, which has poured billions of dollars into research and development in a variety of business segments, including its core search offerings, wearable technology, virtual reality, connected devices, and content distribution such as YouTube.
The widespread R&D efforts are a luxury the market-share leader in online search can afford.
The company last year posted revenue of more than $66 billion, with net income topping $14.4 billion.
Advertising accounted for nearly 90% of Google’s revenue, and it’s coming “increasingly from mobile phones and newer advertising formats,” the company said in its recently released annual report.
The latest local effort, much like Google’s prior work in OC, ultimately plays into the ecosystem it has developed for Google AdWords, the company’s main advertising product and primary source of revenue. Local Google employees have also lent a hand in developing AdMob, a newer monetization initiative to help developers understand data on users. The goal is to build and retain audiences and extend the amount of time users interact with an app.
“We’re helping developers do more with their own data,” Ketchum said in a keynote talk last week at the OC Mobile Conference hosted by Irvine-based Octane, a nonprofit that links startups and emerging companies with resources and investors. “We’ve centralized this rich understanding of users with Google Analytics.”
Google picked the Game Developers Conference earlier this month in San Francisco to announce that its Native Ads offering will give developers the ability to place customized advertisements into the design of a game without them looking completely out of place and hindering play.
Building
The company also touted AdMob’s ability to predict when specific users are likely to spend money on in-app purchases, as well as offer custom text or display ads promoting items for sale.
“This whole mobile platform is building, and we have a ton of it in Orange County,” Ketchum said.
Google, which has had operations in Irvine since at least 2006, employs more than 200 people here at its new digs at the Impac Center, which features an outdoor deck, private gym, underground parking with space for bicycles and electric vehicles, and conference rooms dubbed The 55, Monochromatic Triangle, and The Wedge.
