Cricket LIVE on YouTube

This is a cross post from the YouTube Australia blog
Howzat YouTubers! In a world first, we're bringing live sport to YouTube. From March 12 you'll have front row seats to all 60 matches of the latest cricket sensation, Indian Premier League, streamed live on YouTube. That's 45 days of cricket fever.

What's more, from Mumbai to Melbourne, you'll be able to go to the IPL YouTube channel (youtube.com/ipl) for special on-demand content including full match replays, match highlights, player interviews, wickets of the match, top sixes, pitch reports and much more.

Oh, and we'll be back next year for Season 4. Expect cricket puns a plenty!

Posted by Ryan Hall, Head of Business Development, Google Australia and NZ

Partnership update: News Digital Media

We recently renewed our partnership with News Digital Media to deliver targeted advertising across News Digital Media’s sites. The partnership encompasses AdSense for Content and AdSense for Search. (google.com.au/adsense)

AdSense for Content delivers text ads throughout News Digital Media sites that are relevant to the audience and content. Small and large advertisers can target News Digital Media sites to connect with the sites' content and traffic.

AdSense for Search allows News Digital Media to provide Google web search to its visitors, and to earn money by displaying Google ads on its own site search results pages.

Last year, Google's AdSense publisher partners received more than USD $5 billion.

News Digital Media is a vital news and content resource for Australians. By connecting News Digital Media’s sites with our vast base of advertisers, AdSense provides an effective and efficient revenue stream for News Digital Media. We look forward to a successful partnership.

Posted by Ryan Hall, Head of Business Development, Google

Welcome to 2008 from Google Australia

Posted by Julian Persaud, Head of Business Development

Happy new year!

As our regular blog readers will know, 2007 was an amazing year for all of us at Google Australia, with a huge raft of new products, features and local initiatives, from the launch of Google Maps Australia, to the Doodle4Google initiative, to the first ever Google election site, to the announcement of agreements with major Australian businesses such as Fairfax Digital and News Digital Media.

Already in 2008, we've been busy with a number of announcements. For those of you watching at home:

• We launched a new version of Sky in Google Earth which has many great new features. (You may recall that Sky uses images from the Anglo-Australian Observatory).

• As increasing numbers of small Australian businesses, from local cafes to cosmetic dentists, are using Google AdWords, we’re thrilled to reach an agreement under which ReachLocal will become an AdWords reseller in Australia. This will help Australian SMEs participate in the digital economy.

• Australian advertisers can now take advantage of the expanded Conversion Optimiser feature in AdWords. (Available to customers whose campaigns have enabled AdWords Conversion Tracking and accrued at least 200 conversions in the past 30 days).

Stay tuned to this blog - and all the other official Google blogs on the right hand side of this page - for lots more Google news in 2008.