Google Engage Canada for Agencies celebrated its one-year anniversary on Monday, September 17 with half-day events held simultaneously across Canada in Toronto, Montreal, Calgary and Vancouver. The events, connected by Google+ Hangout, brought over 250 Google Engage members together to share their experience advertising with Google platforms.

Images courtesy of Google Canada

DAC representatives were invited to join panels in Montreal, Calgary and Vancouver to provide their industry insight and Google expertise. The panel discussions focused on digital advertising trends, how to market your agency, challenges faced by digital advertising agencies and the future of the digital advertising industry in Canada (mobile was a HUGE point of discussion). Speakers from each event included:

• Montreal: Elazar Gabay (Le Site), Jean-François Renaud (Adviso), Chrystian Guy (DAC)
• Toronto: Justin Ogglesby (Hall MC), Justin Cook (Convurgency), David Lonergan (Hooplah)
• Vancouver: Doug Jasinski (Skunkworks), Chris Breikss (6S Marketing), Nasser Sahlool (DAC)
• Calgary: Daniel Hsu (Maclaren), Cameron Prockiw (Vovia Online Marketing), Ken Dobell (DAC)

Although expanded to include more cities, the events were relatively scaled down compared to last year’s inaugural launches in Toronto and Vancouver. The venues provided an intimate feel, which I think promoted more sharing among the groups, and the Google+ Hangout made it feel like we were all at one large event. The afternoon featured group brainstorm sessions and presentations from Google representatives, who shared some great statistics about the Canadian search landscape. A few statistics to note from the Google presentations included:

• Canadians are one of the highest users of the internet — 80% online, 80% with broadband.
• There are 4.8 billion searches per month in Canada alone.
• 7.9 billion videos are being watched by Canadians every month.
• Canadians use their smartphones: 97% at home, 83% on the go and 77% in the store.
• 79% of Canadian don’t leave home without their smartphone.
• 16% of daily queries on Google have never been searched before.

Google ended the day with a “concert” over Google+ Hangout (AMAZING) and cake (YUM!) to celebrate the first birthday of Google’s Engage program. For those of you that don’t know about Google Engage for Agencies, it’s a free program launched last year designed to help agencies master marketing on Google. Members of Google Engage have access to free training, exclusive tools and all the guidance and support they need to help clients with more effective Search Engine Marketing (SEM).

All in all the day, full of insightful learning, was a lot of fun and provided a great opportunity to network with fellow agencies and industry experts. For more highlights from the events, check out the event hashtags on Twitter: #EngageVAN, #EngageCGY, #EngageMTL and #EngageTOR.