Search and Social Media: 2007 in Review
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Written By Sepideh Saremi | December 20, 2007 | Share This
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The year’s almost over, which means it’s time to look back on search and social media in 2007 and take stock of what happened and what it all means. It was a big year in search and a pretty big year for us at Reprise Media, too: OMMA deemed us Best Search Agency for 2006, we turned four years old, we joined IPG, and we started giving back.
Way back in January 2007, Searchviews predicted quite a few things that came to fruition, among them that Google would keep growing (okay, that was an easy one) and that Panama would be good for Yahoo. The key theme this year was media convergence, with an emphasis on acquisitions and blurring the lines between search and social media. You’ll have to come back tomorrow for our 2008 predictions, but to refresh your memory, here are the big developments of 2007 that we’ll keep close to our hearts… until next year’s big stories overshadow them.
Yahoo
It was a tough year to be #2, especially for the ever-beleaguered Yahoo, which kicked off 2007 with some bad press courtesy of Wired. The magazine skewered the company’s spotty strategy and its then-CEO Terry Semel. No big surprise, first quarter earnings were disappointing, and Semel was replaced with Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang over the summer. Yahoo released some interesting 2.0 tools and bought some others, but this year it mostly floundered when it came time to pull together a cohesive social network strategy that would truly leverage its existing gajillion or so users.
On the search front, Yahoo had a slightly better year: its introduction of Panama was a great move (here’s our full report), America said it loved Yahoo the most, and improvements to its search engine were a step in the right direction. Now Yahoo’s signing up publishers to serve contextual ads in PDFs, and the company also bought Right Media and BlueLithium to expand its ad network. Here’s to putting the ! back into Yahoo! in 2008 - in a good way.
Google
Every year we ask Google, is it possible to be so successful? Really? If it wasn’t for everyone’s favorite upstart-in-shower-slides, Mark Zuckerberg, and all the press and industry upheaval Facebook inspired, I’d say this was Google’s year.
Unlike in 2006, though, Google’s growth didn’t come without costs — 2007 saw the rise of Google as a true world power, wherein Google became everyone’s best Frenemy - i.e., the company we all hate to love (though Zuckerberg seems to be gunning for top spot in the frenemy category for next year). Google managed to get sued for $1 billion over YouTube, had some antitrust trouble over its acquisition of DoubleClick (apparently now resolved), inspired the ire of both librarians and newspapers, served us some questionable ads, introduced shady “preferred cost bidding,”and without really launching it in a meaningful way, introduced OpenSocial, a consortium that looks like its sole aim is to take down Facebook.
On the other hand, Google also created a super-cool mobile platform/operating system (maybe cooler than the iPhone, maybe not), kept monetizing everything (this could maybe also go in the list of bad things, but we’re all marketers here), and got its hands dirty with TV (not yet a smashing success). Not to mention, Google also continually improved its already supremely useful services (Gmail, Analytics, Reader, etc.), bought and integrated Feedburner, launched iGoogle, and kept us sated with free versions of expensive stuff. Probably in his 20% time, Google co-founder Larry Page even came up with a plan to save the planet and Google funded it. All in all, not bad for a year’s work. Plus, of the top 3 engines, Google’s social network efforts seem most promising and logical. We’ll be watching you, Google, and we know you’ll probably be watching us.
Microsoft
Microsoft was on the defensive (or is that the offensive?) much of this year, especially because Google beat them out for DoubleClick and surpassed it in site traffic. MSFT paid a whopping $6 billion for online ad company aQuantive to help nurse its wounds and then drove Facebook’s valuation to $15 billion by paying $240 million for a small stake - exemplifying its strategy this year, which was to buy or partner up wherever it made sense. Microsoft’s new operating system, Vista, launched with much fanfare but also to mixed reviews. We’ll have to wait and see with this one.
Ask.com
Ask.com is tiny but worked hard this year, introducing contextual ads and getting props for its proactive privacy policy. Its parent company, IAC, decided to be less confusing by breaking up its holdings into a few smaller companies, which should benefit the search engine, and Ask also secured $3.5 billion deal with Google.
Facebook, Social Media
Arguably the leader of the social media pack, Facebook’s high value as a communication vehicle became clear when, after shootings at Virginia Tech, students used the site to share information faster than the news networks could. That paradigm shift continued when the site opened up its API to allow outside development of applications - a move that made VCs sit up and that forced direct competitors and even other industries, like notoriously draconian mobile providers, to follow (in rhetoric, at least).
Thanks to Facebook, it’s not enough to have a site, you’ve got to have a platform. Applications became microcosmic indicators of Facebook’s massive success, and the site made its first acquisition in July. But the social network was also plagued by a some missteps this year. Users of the site are resistant to overt advertising and Facebook bungled the launch of its newest ad program, Beacon, shaking the faith of its advertisers and causing some (minimal) unrest among users, though it continues to secure funding.
Media Convergence, Money, and Ad-Model Growing Pains
ComScore introduced new engagement metrics this year, and social networks added search-like, CPC ad structures. A rash of acquisitions made it clear that everyone was eager to get into the social media game, even if they didn’t know quite how: Ebay bought StumbleUpon, and CBS snagged online video show Wallstrip and music service Last.fm.
This year’s housing market crisis had many worried that the economy’s headed for downturn, but we didn’t think online advertising would be drastically affected, and so far, we’re right. Traditional offline industries (music, TV, and newspapers) continued struggling with web monetization. Steve Jobs railed against DRM, and Radiohead practically gave away their new album as an experiment. The New York Times got rid of paid content online, successfully, but the rest of the newspaper industry seems not to have figured out how to make enough money. In TV, the writers’ strike is still underway because networks aren’t giving writers a cut of online profits, while networks experiment with ways to distribute content online.
And Other Top Stories Worth Remembering…
- For the third year in a row, we evaluated big advertisers for their search-savvy in our Super Bowl Search Marketing Scorecard. The winners made search an integral part of their campaigns, ensuring that millions of dollars spent on TV campaigns didn’t get lost when it came to the search box. Here are parts 1, 2, 3, and 4 of that feature.
- Taco Bell, dirty as their restaurants may have been, proved they know how to leverage search to make the best of a horrible health and PR nightmare.
In sum, a lot of growth for the search industry, the emergence of social media as a real force, and still some hobbling by traditional media companies to catch up or keep up - 2008 will definitely be interesting. What stories do you think will still matter next year? What would you add to this list?
Topics: Advertising: Contextual, Advertising: Online, Ask.com, Facebook, Google, Investment, M&A, Media Convergence, Microsoft, Mobile, Online Video, Publishing, Search: Innovations, Search: News, Social Media, Technology, Wireless & Mobile, Yahoo! |