Display advertising became a bigger focus for Google (NSDQ: GOOG) this year and the company, still better known for search, has unveiled a new ad campaign to make sure advertisers get it. The campaign is called Watch This Space. In a blog post, Neal Mohan, Google’s VP of Product Management, says that the ads will show up as part of a display series on the web as well as in print and “maybe even elsewhere.”

In May 2009, Google ran its first primetime TV ad to promote its Chrome browser, but showing off its display abilities does not require the same kind of consumer-facing effort. Still, when asked about a possible TV ad run, a Google rep said, “We’re confirming that the ads will run online and in print, in places where they’re likely to reach marketers and agencies interested in display advertising.”

When Google fully integrated its DoubleClick unit with AdWords last year, the company set a goal of making display a $1 billion business. Deals, such as the one with Omnicom and the purchase of demand-side platform Invite Media have certainly helped it close in on that endeavor, especially as display advertising has reversed last year’s declines and is continuing to grow.

Getting its success in display across is the major point of this ad effort. It clearly shows that despite the progress in display, that business requires more hand-holding as opposed to its search business, where Google remains the dominant player. In display, Google is big and getting bigger, but it’s far from the only game in town.

In his blog post, Mohan seems to acknowledge the overwhelming association of Google and search, with display still in shadows. “Advertising with Google used to be all about four lines of text, on Google.com and on our partner sites,” Mohan writes. “No longer. Did you know that, outside of ads alongside search results, more than 40 percent of the ads that we show are now non-text ads? And that doesn’t include the 45 billion ads that our DoubleClick advertising products serve every day across the web.”

The first ad in the Watch This Space campaign is embedded below:

{/exp:get_graph} {/exp:tweet_quote}