Bengali language support widens Google ad reach by 200 million 
Google has added Bengali to the list of supported languages for its AdWords and AdSense programmes, giving advertisers the ability to target 200 million more people in their native tongue. The company is making efforts to tap into growing markets in India and neighbouring countries, with another 300 million people speaking Indian languages expected to come online in the next four years. The addition of Bengali increases the number of the region's languages supported by the platform to eight and suggests there is potential to expand to more.

Google has learned to speak Bengali and found an extra 200 million people to advertise to along the way.

Bengali is the world's sixth-most-prevalent language, is the official tongue of Bangladesh and is widely spoken in some India states. Yet the language's 200 million speakers have been cruelly denied the bounty that is Google's AdWords and Ad Sense search monetisation programs, the foundation of the company's revenue base.

Google therefore suggests that adding Bengali to its list of supported languages will mean great things for local publishers and advertisers, as its now possible to target 200 million extra people in their native tongues.

The company's announcement suggests it has plans to address more regional languages, too.

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Shalini Girish, Google India's marketing solutions director said “we expect another 300 million Indian language users to come online in the next four years.” Advertising in Bengali is therefore “keeping up with with the needs of an evolving Internet audience” rather than tapping a hitherto-unaddressed market.

“Over the coming months, we will share more about our efforts to further build on this,” Girish adds.

Google recently added eight new Indian languages to voice search, with Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati, Malayalam and Urdu joining Hindi.

The Register expects AdWords will therefore soon reach Telugu and Marathi as they are the 15th and 16th most-spoken languages in the world according o the language prevalence list Google's offered to quantify the size of the Bengali-speaking world. The list says Telugu has 74.2m speakers and Marathi 71.8m, for 146m more lovely sets of read-for-ads eyeballs. If Google also adds Urdu and Lahnda, two languages widely-used in Pakistan, AdWords will reach another 198m people.

Doing so may not, however, turn into rivers of Gold as Google learned when Indians balked at paying even US$0.75 for apps, necessitating a reduction in the floor price to 10 rupees or just US$0.10. Bengali advertisers may need similarly low price options, but Google's auction system should take care of that. ®