Students from anywhere in the world can sign up for the Google Online Marketing Challenge, a hands-on competition which will give undergraduate and post-graduate students direct experience with online advertising and marketing. Student groups will receive $200 to spend on Google AdWords advertising and will have three weeks to outline a strategy, run a campaign, assess their results, and provide a local business of their selection with recommendations to further develop their online marketing. 8,000 students have already made the commitment, including 724 teams in the U.S. Entries will be judged by an international panel of professors, and winners will be chosen based on the success of the campaigns and the quality of two competition reports: one before the students begin the Challenge and one after the campaign has ended. There are still two weeks left for signing up with your University; the Challenge begins in February 2008.
"As online marketing becomes a larger part of the overall marketing mix, we think it is important to help the world"s future business leaders understand the medium and the vast opportunity that exists online. By connecting university students with local businesses in their area we hope to give students great experience and help local businesses harness the power of the web to attract more customers. We set an initial target of 200 participating classes worldwide and are delighted that we have surpassed this target with 724 university teams in the US already signed up. Since there is no limit to how many teams can participate and there are still two weeks to register, we look forward to more universities signing up," said David Lawee, vice president of product marketing at Google.