According to data from Kantar Media, Google spent $213 million while advertising itself in 2011, $70 million of which went toward TV spots.

The $213 million expenditure is almost 400% more than Google shelled out on advertising in 2010 – an estimated $56 million. The majority of the spending went towards online ads, though Google also promoted itself on television and in magazines and newspapers. Much of the company’s marketing last year seemed to focus on Google+. Last October, a full page ad was taken out in the New York Times after the Dalai Lama joined Desmond Tutu in a Google+ Hangout:

Kanter also points out that Google spent about 1.2% of its 2011 U.S. revenue on advertising, similar to the 1.5% Apple and Microsoft spent.

The aforementioned $70 million spent on TV ads included Superbowl spots promoting Google+, as well as the following Muppets commercial, shown around the holidays and during the Academy Awards broadcast:

Google also ran the award-winning “Dear Sophie” commercial, which promoted multiple Google products:

Google also violated its own search standards in 2011, while promoting its Chrome browser in its search engine, and ended up devaluing Chrome’s page rank, thus penalizing itself, which likely ended up costing a chunk of change. Interestingly, Google Chrome had recently surpassed Microsoft’s Internet Explorer in usage, for a day – on March 18th.