Europe's parliamentarians leave Strasbourg today to start their intensive final campaigning for the elections on June 4-7. Some 375 million eligible voters across 27 countries will elect 736 European Members of Parliament. This is the first major vote in Europe since Barack Obama captured the American presidency, in large part because of his success in leveraging the Internet.

In an effort to boost interest and participation, YouTube this week launched Questions for Europe in partnership with the broadcaster Euronews. So far, we have been pleasantly surprised by the amount of interest this venture has generated. In just two days the Questions for Europe YouTube channel has become the third Most Subscribed Reporter Channel in France.



Many prospective members of the European Parliament are seeking to learn some of the lessons from (and use some of the tools deployed on) the other side of the Atlantic. Already last October, the European Internet Foundation - a platform of discussion between MEPs and tech companies - discussed lessons from America for European politics.

Politics on the video sharing website no longer is limited to 'gotcha' moments of exposing politicians' slip-ups. Now it has become a much more proactive, powerful medium. Seven of the 16 US presidential candidates used it to announce their campaign, and Obama deployed the site as a cornerstone for building his "Yes We Can" campaign online. For voters, YouTube helps shrink distances and lower language barriers empowering people to communicate with one another and politicians. The U.S. presidential debate YouTube hosted with CNN provided some moving examples.

Outside the United States, YouTube has also been a part of political campaigns in Spain, Poland, Israel and New Zealand. More and more world leaders are launching their own YouTube Channels, from Gordon Brown in the UK to Queen Rania in Jordan - and most recently, the Pope.

In our Euronews project, questions are posted via videos on the specially created channel and will be answered either by Euronews journalists themselves, analysts or politicians - on prime time broadcasts. We're curious what will be asked, so tune in for updates as the election approaches.

Posted by Bill Echikson, Senior Manager, Communications, Brussels and Aaron Ferstman, YouTube Director of Political Communications, EMEA

The European Commission is hosting the first ever EU SME week. The tagline - "Small Business, Big Ideas" - aptly captures the excitement of a small business, and Google was one too just a few years ago. Now we offer online advertising solutions that many of today's SMEs use as part of their marketing strategy. While the local or national market is a great start for any business, clearly the single market (and beyond) should be the ultimate growth ambition of European entrepreneurs.

And the opportunity is clearly there. We've noted on this blog before that - according to recent Commission estimates - only 7% of EU consumers had shopped cross-border. How does the picture look from the seller's perspective?

SMEs that use AdWords, Google's online advertising product, can reach consumers who are searching for products and services in multiple languages, across borders, all from a single online advertising account paid for in one currency. Advertisers may target ads to users in more than 40 languages or use location targeting to direct ads to different countries, regions, or cities. The biggest bonus though, is that advertisers only pay if someone interacts with their ad. In simple terms, if there is no click, there is no payment.

AdWords offers the ability for SMEs to show ads to consumers using several methods, such as matching country or language targeting to Google domains (.fr, .de, etc) or by specific geographic search terms ("London plumbers" would show to users in London). Another component of targeting is by an analysis of the user's IP address. IP addresses can give a general sense of a user's physical location, based on the regional assignment of IP addresses. Such advertising targeting capabilities give advertisers a reasonable sense of control that they are not wasting precious advertising euros on clicks from potential customers that they are unable to serve.

Many European SMEs have successfully grown their businesses across national borders thanks to the global targeting capabilities in AdWords. Having found success in the UK with AdWords, the footwear retailer Cloggs launched a French-language website coupled with ads targeted to French consumers which has generated an average of 100 sales daily.

What we see is that the proportion of our EU customers' AdWords budget spent on cross-border prospects is about double the Commission's 7% figure for cross-border consumer purchases. That difference is not surprising - AdWords advertisers can more easily target consumers across borders compared to traditional media. Further, our figures include B2B sellers, and some may have set up local fulfillment operations such that consumers are unaware that the ultimate seller is in fact based abroad.

In any event this is a figure that both we and the Commission would like to see increase. And more choice for consumers is a good thing too. To that end, we have increased our efforts to educate AdWords advertisers about how they can attract consumers from across borders to their websites by expanding their advertising campaigns internationally. AdWords specialists recently held online web tutorial sessions in 4 languages open to advertisers in 7 EU countries, offering tips for how to expand their reach across borders. We invited thousands of advertisers in the EU to these live sessions and will make recordings of these trainings available online. This month, we're going to post international campaign expansion tips on Google's European Inside AdWords blogs (check out the Swedish Inside AdWords blog for an example), spreading the word for how AdWords can support the entrepreneurial ambitions of SMEs in the EU.

Posted by Rich Flanagan, Product Marketing Manager