Archive for February 24, 2010
Google in trouble again. Microsoft dobbed.
Feb 24th
Google yesterday took the wraps off its new publisher-side ad platform, combining its ad and search technologies with DoubleClick’s. Today, it has been met with a frosty reception from the European Commission over several competition complaints from rivals.
Google’s combined DoubleClick and Google Ad Manager product is designed to ease the complexity publishers face in serving ads, managing ad network relationships and maximizing revenue from inventory sold directly and through ad nets or exchanges, says Google’s blog.
New features include an open API that lets publishers tie in third-party applications like forecasting and workflow tools, integration with the DoubleClick Ad Exchange and new yield-optimization features.
But the European Commission is now considering complaints from three online companies regarding Google practices including its search rankings, which could stop the search giant dead in its tracks.
The complaints from UK price comparison site Foundem and French legal search engine ejustice.fr allege that Google’s search algorithm demotes their sites in web search results because they compete with Google.
Microsoft-owned Ciao has also complained to European authorities about Google’s standard terms and conditions, which has led Google to tell some reporters that it believes Microsoft has fuelled the complaint fire.
Google has been plagued by regulatory scrutiny in recent years. Most recently, the US Department of Justice has challenged Google’s settlement with book publishers and authors groups to create an online digital archive. The US Federal Trade Commission is also seeking more information on the competitive impact of its proposed $750 million purchase of mobile advertising company AdMob.
Now, the European Commission has written to Google to find out how its search functions work.
But Google is betting publishers will want the simplicity of a single provider to manage their inventory and provide monetization options through either its AdSense ad network or the DoubleClick exchange.
Google said on its blog, “We see an opportunity to improve ad serving even further by combining Google’s technology and infrastructure with DoubleClick’s display advertising and ad serving experience. Since we acquired DoubleClick in March 2008, our engineering and product teams have been working with online publishers to tackle the obstacles that prevent them from maximizing revenues from their websites.”
Either way you look at it, this is a sign of many more battles to come when it comes to the search giants. But is Google really doing anything wrong? Perhaps its competitors are just jealous…
Twitter clocks up 50m tweets. What does that mean for marketers?
Feb 24th
Twitter, which has only been around since 2007, now racks up more than 50 million tweets a day. That means 50 million visits a day to a site that has yet to figure out how to monetize. But on the plus side, those numbers mean an opportunity for advertisers to get in front of 50 million people. How? Simple.
For the past few years, advertisers’ exposure on social networking sites has been seen as essential. But perhaps it’s not about advertising, per se. Perhaps it’s not about talking either. If there are 50 million tweets, someone is listening, and wouldn’t you want someone to be listening to nice things about you?
One marketer has suggested to me that Twitter should be about getting consumers to talk to each other – not a place for brands to preach to them.
It’s an interesting thought. So I decided to listen into the conversation and see if customers really were talking to each other.
To do this, go to www.search.twitter.com and you come across a ‘Google’ search-like box. Type in a brand or company. I typed in ‘Coca-Cola’, for example.
Then I was presented with a page full of tweeters who had tweeted about ‘Coca’Cola’. Funnily enough, almost none of the tweets were from Coca-Cola itself or stories about Coca-Cola. People are genuinely talking about it.
Another example. I typed in ‘Google’. Given the news that the EU is going to invest the search king following the catastrophic launch of Buzz. I found a few links to news stories, but again, consumers were actually talking about Google, or at least mentioning the brand, in actual conversations.
However, the problem with Twitter is that it is time consuming. I am on Twitter (here!) but I rarely go on to check on tweets because before I can get to the bottom of the list they are updating. These 50 million tweets are a lot to keep track of.
But perhaps it’s worth keeping in mind though, that the best way to use to site isn’t to preach, but instead listen and just be happy that consumers are talking about you. That, is free.
Moreover, Twitter attracts a number of influential users, including Google’s Eric Schmidt and Microsoft’s Bill Gates. Today we hear that the Dalai Lama even has an account on the microblogging site.
Just imagine if you could get those guys to talk about you.
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