Google Finally Starts Investing in Advertising with #EasyThrowback Campaign for Google Photos

Google reverts from it's usual trend of not promoting products by running an advertising campaign for Google Photos over multiple weeks.

Google is notorious for creating great products but not completely investing in advertising them so that they flop. A few things come to mind like Google Helpouts and Google Wallet. Wallet didn't completely die, but has now been split and rebranded, and, to be honest, it is probably only still around because Apple did a good enough job to promote touchless payments with Apple Pay.

However, it looks like they may be turning that around with Google Photos! Google is using the Twitter account they created for Google Photos to advertise on the social media network for the last four weeks. Every Thursday for the last four weeks, including Thursday, Google Photos has owned Twitter's Promoted Trend with the hashtag "#EasyThrowback" (seen below) to build off of the current conversation of "Throwback Thursday" that happens on the social media network every Thursday.

Google's #EasyThrowback Promoted Trend on Twitter

Twitter's Promoted Trend is an ad that shows up for all users on that day in the given country for which the advertiser buys it. As you would expect, with such high exposure, it comes with a hefty price tag. According to Sprout Social, it costs $200,000 for the United States. That means that so far, Google has likely paid at least $800,000 for advertising on Twitter alone.

Accompanying the Promoted Trend are Promoted Tweets from Google Photos. When you click on the trend on mobile or desktop, click the #EasyThrowback hashtag in a tweet, or search for #EasyThrowback, you'll see a Promoted Tweet like the one below at the top of the search results. This allows Google to give Twitter users a bit more context on what #EasyThrowback is and how they can use Google Photos for Throwback Thursday.

Google Photos' Promoted Tweet for #EasyThrowback

In addition to the Promoted Trend, it looks like Google is also paying athletes, bloggers, photographers, and musicians to tweet with their own Throwback Thursday messages using "#EasyThrowback". Just doing a quick search of "#EasyThrowback #ad" brought back a long list of Tweets that were sent as ads for Google Photos the last four Thursdays, including the one below from JJ Redick, an NBA player. Reddick is the starting shooting guard for the Los Angeles Clippers. Although, he may not be Lebron James or Kobe Bryant, he does have over 200,000 Twitter followers and is a well known player for both NCAA and NBA basketball fans.

JJ Redick tweets an ad for Google Photos

After looking at the Instagram profiles of a few of those sharing advertising posts on Twitter, it looks like the promotional posting is not Twitter specific. The posts are happening at least on Instagram too which means that Google is paying for advertising on multiple social media networks.

With all of this advertising, Google is likely spending at least $1,000,000 on advertising Google Photos and specifically building awareness of the ability to find photos by searching for keywords. The company could actually be spending a few million dollars on advertising depending on how much they are paying individual posters like Redick.

This is a big change for Google actually promote products instead of launching and leaving them. Hopefully it is the sign of a trend and not a one time initiative so that Google's innovative products like Photos have a chance of gaining awareness and building a sizable user base.

What do you think about Google advertising Google Photos?