Advertising: Distribution
eBay takes on Google
|
Written By Mohammad Usman | July 9, 2007 | Share This
|
|
In the ongoing battle between Google Checkout and Paypal, eBay recently delivered another blow by publicly denouncing Google Checkout’s performance. On Friday, Bloomberg published an article quoting eBay CEO Meg Whitman, in which she calls attention to both Google’s poor user ratings and PayPal’s revenue contribution. From Bloomberg,
“In recent surveys, the world’s largest auctioneer found that less than one out of five users of Google’s Checkout online payment service was happy with it. At EBay’s PayPal, the figure was more than double that. Meanwhile, PayPal, bought by EBay for $1.5 billion in 2002, has widened its lead over Checkout since the holiday season.”
Granted, eBay owns PayPal - it’s no wonder they support their own online payment service.
(more…)
Google Urges FCC to Adopt Auction Model
|
Written By Kate Zimmermann | May 22, 2007 | Share This
|
|
The New York Times reports that on Monday, Google filed a proposal with the Federal Communications Commission to suggest that radio airwaves be sold in a real-time auction, like the search ad network run by Google AdWords. Google argues in their petition that a real-time auction would maximize efficiency of spectrum allocation, thus affording more broadband options for consumers. Though Google denies any plans to bid in an upcoming sale of broadcast spectrum (scheduled for February 2009), Google has been a vocal advocate of a nationwide digital wireless network that might serve as an alternative broadband channel. Google promotes competition among existing digital network providers and seeks to establish a more open, market-driven spectrum access policy.
USA Today points out that another group, Frontline Wireless, has already made a similar appeal to the FCC. Frontline is appealing to the FCC to establish an auction model that considers the benefit to public safety from an inter-operable, universally accessible communications system.
Google Launches Ad Creation Marketplace for Video and Audio Ads
|
Written By Kate Zimmermann | May 10, 2007 | Share This
|
|
Yesterday Google launched their Ad Creation Marketplace through Google Adwords, to help advertisers create radio and video ads without any prior experience. Check out screenshots of the new interface, or watch Google’s demo video. From Inside Adwords,
“We wanted to make it easy for any advertiser to try out video — even someone who doesn’t know anything about video advertising or video ad creation. So, we’ve developed the Google Ad Creation Marketplace, accessible right from your AdWords account. The Ad Creation Marketplace is a resource for advertisers who are interested in running video ads but don’t have experience creating video ads and want customized help from a professional.”
The Ad Creation Marketplace is a searchable directory of professional ad specialists who can provide script writing, editing, production, and voice-over talent. The process of finding a specialist takes a week on average and is expected to cost anywhere from $100 to $1000. Check out Google’s comprehensive FAQ for more information about the Ad Creation Marketplace.
Google Announces TV Ad Partnership with DISH Network and Astound Cable
|
Written By Kate Zimmermann | April 3, 2007 | Share This
|
|
The Wall Street Journal reported in March that Google has been testing targeted TV ads with a small California cable operator in anticipation of an eventual deal with DISH Network. Today Google confirms a partnership with DISH (owned by EchoStar Communications) and Astound Cable. From the Press Center,
“Working closely with our partners, EchoStar and Astound Cable, we are currently running a trial to deliver better ads to viewers and help advertisers, operators and programmers more efficiently buy, schedule, deliver and measure ads on television.”
Using anonymized data from set-top-boxes, Google will be able to target ads by demographic, daypart and channel. Ads will be purchased through Google’s automated online platform on a CPM basis, allowing advertisers to “make changes to their campaigns as often and as quickly as they like.” CNET reports that a handful of advertisers have already signed up, including E*Trade Financial and 1-800-Flowers.
The biggest potential roadblock to Google’s TV ad program is resistance from cable networks. Google is automating an industry that has long been run on power lunches and personal relationships. Cable operators may see Google as a direct threat to their business - though Google is relying on deals with small networks in order to generate significant inventory. Despite cable networks’ hesitancy, critics universally agree that television advertising is an archaic industry. Furthermore, Google’s delivery of more relevant ads may encourage viewers with DVR units to watch ads rather than fast forward through them. Google’s promise that ads will be better targeted is one of the major selling points of its TV ad program. As Charles W. Ergen, CEO of EchoStar, states,
“Through this groundbreaking partnership with Google, we are confident we will be able to bring increased efficiencies to DISH Network’s advertising sales and more accurate, up-to-date viewer measurement with easily accessible online reporting to advertisers.”
DISH network’s 13 million viewers will provide a rich national sample for Google’s initial TV ad tests - being such a radical departure from the “traditional” way of selling TV ads, Google’s performance here will make or break their long-term vision of automating ad sales across multiple media.
Search Revenues to Reach $21.5 billion by 2011, According to New Piper Jaffray Research
|
Written By Kate Zimmermann | February 22, 2007 | Share This
|
|
Piper Jaffray has published a very comprehensive report on “The User Revolution: The New Advertising Ecosystem and the Rise of the Internet as a Mass Medium.” The 425 page document took over a year to produce and covers everything from the “Disintegration of Traditional Media Models” to “the Video Explosion” to “The Role of the Intermediaries: Ad Networks and Lead Generation.” In the Silk Road newsletter introducing the report Safa Rashtchy, Managing Director and Senior Internet Analyst at Piper Jaffray, says, “Consider this report as a warning of a storm that has already formed, a storm that will destroy many models and create new ones. Luckily, the full cycle of the storm will still take a few more years to complete, and there is still time to react.” Among their key findings, Piper Jaffray concludes,
- “We expect global online advertising revenue to reach $81.1 billion by 2011, representing a 21% CAGR (2006-2011). We expect U.S. online advertising revenue to reach $42 billion by 2011, representing 11.4% of total advertising budgets, up from approximately 6.6% of total advertising budgets in 2006. In the United States, we expect search revenues to reach $21.5 billion by 2011, slightly ahead of non-search revenues of $20.5 billion, while we expect both segments to grow at a CAGR of around 17% (2006-2011).
- “The consumer is…not only becoming more informed and confident about purchase decisions, but also increasingly taking control of the
consumption of information and content that used to be distributed by networks, studios, publishers, and retailers. We believe this trend will cause a significant rise in prominence of the Internet as a major content consumption and marketing medium.- “The Internet has increasingly become a principal medium for community, communication, and entertainment—three areas that have collided together and are impacting each other’s growth—generating a new type of activity that we call communitainment.
- “The Internet has become a mainstream media outlet that is now rivaling traditional media such as radio, television, newspapers, and magazines for reach and advertising dollars.
- “The proliferation of online and offline media outlets has resulted in shrinking television audiences and an increasingly fragmented media
landscape…The net result is that advertisers increasingly will need to buy more inventory, from nearly all types of media, especially the Internet, to have the desired impact.- “Search is the second most commonly used application on the Web with 550 million searches daily in the United States, and search marketing is a $15.8 billion global industry growing to $44.5 billion over the next five years. We believe the five key trends in the search industry are as follows: 1) Search is the new portal; 2) Search is becoming a branding tool; 3) Google’s dominance is increasing; 4) Local search remains a looming opportunity; and 5) New search technologies are likely to expand the field.
- “We believe Google’s wide variety of non-search-related products creates a virtuous cycle of brand affinity that drives incremental search volume.
- “We believe Internet video ads could become a game changer for large brand advertisers, who are used to the 15 or 30 second TV commercial. In today’s Internet, the advertiser must actively engage the user in order to create a brand impression.
- “Portals maintain the highest reach, but the fastest growing category of destinations is communitainment sites such as MySpace and Facebook. The most valuable advertising for broad reach inventory is in the Portal, Search, News, and Entertainment categories.
- “We expect affiliate marketing to remain a vital marketing channel for advertisers due to its high ROI proposition.
- “We expect large, multi-national traditional agencies to eventually have full interactive capabilities, largely through acquisitions of pure-play agencies.”
JetBlue Launches Cross-Media Apology Campaign
After an embarrassing collapse of service during the valentine’s day winter storm, JetBlue has launched a massive Apology Campaign. From newspaper ads to videos on YouTube, JetBlue is tackling their negative press with a dose of humility. JetBlue’s founder David Neeleman says on YouTube,
“Obviously this is the most difficult time in our history…I want to assure you that the events that transpired last week and they way that they transpired will never happen again…so I ask for your business and your trust and we will show you that we will be a better company because of the very very difficult things that our customers had to endure, and that our crew members had to endure, over the past week.”
So far it seems to be working - the video has been viewed over 40,000 times and has received some positive feedback from people touched by JetBlue’s sincerity. What’s more, passengers caught in the mixup were sent personal email apologies from the airline with a flight refund and voucher for a free round trip within the next year.
Accepting culpability wasn’t the only thing JetBlue did right - they also put together a terrific cross-media campaign. In addition to the video in YouTube and full-page ads in newspapers across the East Coast, JetBlue sent Neeleman to the David Letterman show, released a highly-viral “Passenger Bill of Rights” and launched a paid search campaign. Paid search ads for branded keyterms read, “Dear JetBlue Customers - View Personal Message from our CEO about our Customer Bill of Rights” above the url “www.jetblue.com/promise.” The first thing on the landing page is a huge link to the Customer Bill of Rights and three phenomenal one-way price deals.
Though JetBlue predicts a Q1 loss as a result of the cancellations, their highly-publicized apology is spinning public embarrassment into a positive branding campaign.
Google Jumps into Video Game Advertising for $23 Million
Rumors that Google was “in talks” to buy Adscape Media, a video game ad placement company, were finally confirmed this morning when Google agreed to acquire Adscape for $23 Million. Back in January, I wrote,
“This is the first time Google has expressed interest in in-game advertising, and further example of how Google is re-applying their AdWords methodology to new ad formats.”
With today’s announcement, however, Red Herring reports, “Sources familiar with the in-game ad business said an Adscape acquisition gives Google little beyond a few potentially interesting patents. While market conditions could change rapidly, don’t expect the Internet giant to announce big in-game ad deals with publishers like Electronic Arts anytime soon.” Though Google may not be jumping into in-game advertising anytime soon, it certainly wouldn’t be a surprise after Google’s tests in print, radio, mobile and video advertising.
Google wasn’t the first search company to express interest video game ads - Last May, Microsoft bought in-game advertising company Massive for a rumored $200 - 400 Million. As Microsoft wrote in their press release, “Massive and Microsoft can help lead with our shared vision of delivering more targeted, measurable and effective opportunities for advertisers to reach today’s youth audience in a largely untapped market.” Though the Adscape deal is much smaller than Massive (no pun intended), Microsoft must not be thrilled to see Google ‘tapping’ into their video game ad market.
Discussion
- Google Buys Adscape, In-Game Ad Startup (Google OS)
- Google’s Got Game. Advertising, that is (Web Pro News)
- Google Buys In Game Ad Company (Screenwerk)
Note To Politicians: There’s an Internet Beyond YouTube
|
Written By Kate Zimmermann | February 14, 2007 | Share This
|
|
2008 is already being called “The YouTube Election” thanks to the scores of viral videos being uploaded by presidential hopefuls to attract popular support. Today Michael Bassik on TechPresident writes about how candidates have used search marketing in their online campaigns. He reports, “To my surprise, only five of the 17 presumed candidates have purchased keywords on search engines,” and furthermore, “no candidate seems to be using search to reach voters searching for information on specific issues.”
Bassik notes, however, that Republicans seem to be doing a better job of leveraging search. Back in October, I wrote about the linguistic mistakes that liberal politicians were already making in SEM,
“A proper…campaign would target buzz words with ‘pain points’ - or, words that trigger an emotional response. These are terms based on metaphors, cliches and commonly-used language. Conservatives have already come up with a dictionary’s worth of viral keywords that isolate Democrats from mainstream America. They use personalized terms to attack specific candidates - for example, John Kerry’s alleged “flip-flopping.” Democrats, on the other hand, are investing in paid search with a list of keywords that don’t trigger an emotional response without prior knowledge of the candidate [such as politicians names]… Of the generic terms that Democrats are bidding on, they’ve chosen to target the very same terms that were invented by conservatives to attack liberal candidates! For example, MyDD.com appears to be bidding on “flip-flop”, to point readers to a story titled “Bush’s Top Ten Flip-Flops.” Not only does this ad place Democrats in a defensive position, it reinforces the validity of ‘flip-flop’ as a neutral term! Instead of coming up with their own politicized “frames”, Democrats are recycling the very terms that put them at a linguistic disadvantage.”
Searchviews ran a three part series about the implications of politicians becoming search savvy, parts of which reverberate what Bassik and others have already attested:
“Search gives politicians a window of access to the public conversation. It puts them in touch with voters that they might not reach through conventional means…Search helps interested citizens find the campaign. Just as the primary goal of a campaign is public outreach, the primary value of SEO and SEM is public visibility.
“For efficiencies sake, “grass roots” marketing no longer means traveling door to door to generate support - it means reaching out to individuals in niche communities, which are no longer defined strictly by geographic location. People gather information and communicate via the internet, so traditional campaign techniques - the stump tours, hand-shaking, distributing fliers, and cold-calling are far less effective than search at reaching the mainstream audience. Think about the last time you physically cut out a newspaper article to give to a friend, as opposed to just emailing her the story (or in my case - blogging about it). In the past two years with the explosion of social media, political conversations are taking place almost exclusively online. Promoting politics through search is not only more efficient, it’s more effective.”
We just finished a huge Scorecard report that pointed out how Super Bowl advertisers leveraged search techniques for their cross-media advertising campaigns. The same criticisms we held against the advertisers (namely that, “few companies put together all the elements necessary to translate interest and buzz into web activity”) apply to political candidates launching multi-million dollar campaigns. If you’re going to promote your candidacy through the internet, start with a proper search strategy.
Related Posts
- Politics and Search: The SEMs Persepective
- Politics and Search: It’s All About the Hamiltons
- Politics and Search: Bidding on Failure
- Video the Vote Brings out the Ugly
- Net Neutrality Debate Heats Up
Blip.tv Pioneers Customized In-Stream Video Ads
|
Written By Kate Zimmermann | February 12, 2007 | Share This
|
|
Blip.tv will soon let users add customized, clickable in-stream ads to their videos. Though Blip users can already insert network ads into video content, the new service will let videographers advertise their own sites and products. The first instance of this D-I-Y video advertising will be, appropriately, in the video podcast of Make Magazine. NewTeeVee reports,
“The mechanics of including ads will be similar to those in place for users to add their own stock intro or outro clips to videos. The ads will initially work with content in Quicktime and Flash, though Blip’s Mike Hudack told us Windows Media could be added if there’s enough demand. This means that even videos downloaded and saved, or played in iTunes, can generate clickthroughs and statistics.”
Stats for ad impressions and clickthroughs will eventually be available to users via Blip’s reporting tools. As users become more aware of how to use video as a marketing/sales tool, I wonder what impact it will have on users’ perception of video content ownership and value.
Super Bowl Ads Missed Big Opportunities
|
Written By Kate Zimmermann | February 5, 2007 | Share This
|
|
With another Super Bowl in the books, it’s time to sit back and review the real winners and losers in Sunday’s big game: the advertisers. The interest generated by their commercials translated into millions of searches as viewers around the world “Googled” the products and services they featured. We took a look at how companies used search marketing to turn that buzz into measurable Web activity. In our third annual “Search Marketing Scorecard”, we’ve ranked Super Bowl advertisers based on their ability to use search engines as a link between their TV ads and a web presence.
Based on our evaluation of multiple search marketing best practices, we found that this year’s advertisers are:
- Improved, But Still Underperforming
Super Bowl advertisers did a better job integrating their online and offline efforts this year, but there were still a significant number of missed opportunities. Few companies put together all the elements necessary to translate interest and buzz into web activity. - Lacking Calls to Action
Advertisers continued to overlook the value of having a strong call to action in their commercials. While a majority of companies provided URLs during their ads, less than 20% actually gave viewers a compelling reason to visit their website. - All Buzz, No Substance
Companies like Doritos, Chevrolet, and the NFL featured buzz-worthy consumer-generated ads, inviting user participation and interaction with the brand. However, these commercials did a poor job of directing users to online destinations, failing to capitalize on the opportunity to expand the communities they had built prior to the game.
Some notable trends this year include:
- Use of YouTube
One terrific example of new media marketing came from Pizza Hut. Though its commercial wasn’t consumer-generated, Pizza Hut used paid search to link users to a customized YouTube channel instead of its own corporate site, allowing visitors to continue a dialogue about its ads and products. - Auto Makers Still Missing the Extra Point
Though they purchased a significant number of TV ads, Automotive advertisers were again among the biggest losers in cross-channel integration, with poor visibility across Google, Yahoo and other major search engines.
To see a list of the best and worst advertisers with notable statistics, visit the Reprise Media Scorecard brief, or download the full PDF.
Though I’ll go into greater detail on winners, losers, and trends later this week, I’m generally surprised by how many advertisers did a half-assed job on cross-channel marketing. Integration of on and offline messages is no longer considered cutting edge. Brands capable of Super-Bowl-caliber advertising should at the very least understand how to bring together multiple points of contact online. That means, not just having a website, but using paid search to connect the dots between the TV ad, a compelling call to action, a dynamic landing page, and new media marketing (aka: YouTube).
This brings us to another interesting thought - once the best practices that we measure become ubiquitous, and all advertisers have established dynamic cross-media marketing campaigns with fully integrated search techniques… what’s next? How might our scorecard evaluation change next year, or in five years?
More thoughts to come…
Related Posts