Tag Archives: advertising
Google Knows that Their Growth Requires Outside Developers
Posted on 28. May, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 
1 Comments
The barrage of information that came out of last week’s Google I/O conference is still hard to swallow, but one thing is clear that developer conferences for Google are going to become a focal point for the company going forward. Giving away the new Sprint HTC Evo phone certainly shows where they want folks to concentrate on, but anything that developers not employed by Google create is a win-win situation for both parties.
At one point, Eric Schmidt referred to the developers at the conference as customers, and rightly so. Not only are they customers, but they are part of the Google growth engine. What many naysayers who slam Google for their disruptive efforts don’t seem realize sometimes is that a great deal of wealth has come from what they have been able to do in search, advertising and most recently the mobile phone.
The fantastic business environment from creating new technology platforms that are less like Microsoft and closer to the Apple model is going to pay off for those who plug into them. Therefore, opportunity is beginning to trickle down into outside developers with all of the APIs that are being released by Google to allow for increased innovation, a level at which only those outside the company can foster for added growth beyond the company’s internal efforts to create new services.
That’s because being inside of a big company like Google now requires a lot of scrutiny and approval to get new ideas from within to the mass market. With the legal issues and public criticism the company has faced in 2010, don’t be surprised to see Google spend more time developing platforms and interfaces to develop upon as opposed to working on individual services/features that can now easily be done by those outside of the walls of Mountain View.
New Chrome Ads Highlight Extensions, Translate
Posted on 21. Apr, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 2 Comments
These videos continue to be enjoyable, simply because they are all so different and while Chrome is the singular product promoted, there really is no underlying theme that ties them together other than the similar motif. I think this is a smart move, as consumers are pretty sophisticated about products theses days.
It’s no wonder that people have to be when you think about how many marketing messages a person is exposed to day in and day out. At the same time, the presentation here is simplistic, not trying to alienate those who may not be into the technical side of computers:
Here is a previous ad that the same agency, BBH, did a while back:
Check out this clip on how they made the ad above. It’s pretty cool how they are using their creativity to make these effects instead of just using a PC. It really stretches your abilities while at the same time enables one to make something truly unique:
Google TV Will Have to Use Ads to Subsidize Cost
Posted on 08. Apr, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 0 Comments
It seemed a bit surprising to hear that Google would team up with Intel to release a set-top box, in a project that is being dubbed as Google TV. The reason being is that using Intel chips in a box for television is going to be costly, despite the fact that the operating system running the box (Android or Chrome OS) would be free in terms of licensing costs.
Panasonic, which had announced in 2008 that they would partner with Google to integrate their solution into their TVs right out of the box, has decided that such a solution would indeed prove too costly. Samsung is another company declining any such partnership, instead making the choice to develop an alternative internet TV solution in-house.
It makes one start to wonder how much this set-top box is going to cost. Sure, Sony is game, but they are known to have the highest-end televisions on the market – and they plan on putting the Google platform inside of their TVs. For them, there is little for them to lose if they get involved in the partnership. Plus, they would benefit by having some of their products with Google TV built in as opposed to the set top box model.
The only service provider that has come forward with support for Google TV is DISH Network. There’s relatively little surprise to that move, since DISH plays the role of the underdog, a la T-Mobile for wireless, in the TV market. Problem is, with competition high in this space, it’s going to be a tough sell to get Google set-top boxes in people’s homes without taking a loss on doing so because of the expected price.
So look for Google to make a deal with DISH akin to what it has done for wireless carriers: give up a cut of advertising revenue. Google heading down the path of allowing anyone who wants the capability to put TV ads on a variety of channels, and this combined with search advertising could bring a windfall of profits to both Google and cable/satellite companies. If the only challenge is to get expensive devices into homes that allow this, I don’t see Google or the service providers balking at the cost as long as there are solid revenue expectations down the line.
Just as long as it improves the user experience, overall it will be good to have Google in the television market.
A Look at Google in TV Advertising – Anyone Can Make a Spot
Posted on 06. Apr, 2010 by DC4wr3y. 0 Comments
Here’s a neat little animated sequence that is promoting the Chrome browser’s speed:
Something different, and in fact could even be shown on TV. Google is not usually accustomed to promoting its services on television, but they certainly broke out of their mold with the Super Bowl ad. That spot was actually one that could be seen prior to the Super Bowl broadcast right on YouTube. With that in mind, there are plenty of other ads that Google has put on YouTube that could work on TV, and the fact that they are testing different services for the television market tells me that they are close to moving into that space because it has a lot of profit potential.
If you haven’t seen it yet, take a look at how Slate put a TV advertisement on Fox News using Google’s advertising interface. For just a few thousand bucks they were able to market to a late-night crowd and get some impressions to a website that was set up to count the impact.
Anyone with a digital camera and a computer could therefore create their own advertising campaign. Better yet, why not create a video and post it on YouTube. If it goes viral, edit it and spend some bucks to put it on TV promoting a good or service. Sounds like a plan to me. Anybody interested, I’m in on it. I’ve got ideas. Seriously.
Google TV Ads is a service that is a part of the Adwords program. You can get to the television advertising portion directly by going here.
Hopefully someone will do this. Television advertising needs a kick start, because right now I liken it to visual Ambien.
Wireless Carriers Get Revenue Share From Google Search
Posted on 29. Mar, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 0 Comments
There are an estimated 3 billion people who use cell phones worldwide. Google just wants a portion of them using their search engine.
Tricia Duryee of PaidContent is reporting that the major mobile phone carriers who have Android phones have a deal with Google to share revenue. Not just any revenue of course – but the kind that comes from search engine advertising. Not a shocker, then, when you see search being prominently featured on Android phones. And it isn’t just because Android was developed by Google, but because the carrier providing service for that phone has a stake in the mobile advertising market that Google is trying to enter.
To be sure, it is not that easy right now to make money in mobile advertising. But as the user experience for smartphones improves (a la Android) and the technology gets better, I’m sure the major carriers realize that advertising that is running through their “pipes” will someday prove to be uber-profitable.
Consider Google’s acquisition of mobile advertising firm AdMob for $750 million, which is still awaiting regulatory approval. The amount of money involved in the deal, and the technology that AdMob brings, is surely convincing to the mobile networks that this could be a massive money machine for everyone involved. While Google is the expert on search advertising, AdMob will bring its experience in web display and app display ads to the table, which could be later added to a partnership deal with carriers if it hasn’t been already.
It may already be part of it, since Duryee’s article also says that carriers get a piece of the Android Market revenue that is coming in, and that has to be growing.
And let’s not forget the fact that Google is trying to change the way we buy mobile phones. Instead of choosing a carrier and then deciding on a phone, they want us to pick out a phone and then choose a carrier. Hence the reasoning for a powerful Google phone like the Nexus One. Consider the options table when you go to purchase Google’s phone:
The same will soon be said for Chrome OS hardware, may that be a netbook or tablet. We will most likely lust after the best specs that Google knows we want and then choose where our connectivity for that device will come from. There will be a choice of carriers – much larger than this example above if they are interested in lucrative ad profits.
So is the Nexus One really a failure it has been said to be? Probably not. This is a trial run to see how Google can perform in the hardware market, and the fact that the carriers are making money from Google Search, and possibly other things in the future like Google Apps, will give them cause to keep quiet while Mountain View tries to change the dynamics of the wireless industry.
Why Paid News Online Will Not Work
Posted on 20. Mar, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 0 Comments
News Corporation’s Rupert Murdoch is not a happy man when he looks at the barren landscape of print media. In fact, he is of the idea that people who want to read news online as opposed to the newspaper or a magazine should have to pay for it. This makes him feel that the less than free model that Google promotes is a freeloading conduit to all that is wrong with the non-paying Internet. So much so, that he has on several occasions threatened to sue them.
This is problematic for several reasons. The first is that those of us who have been using the internet since the nineties have grown accustomed to free content online. Because of this I think that many of us out there are hard pressed to believe that a paid content model is really going to work. But there is also another reason: eyeballs.
Eyeballs are what the advertising business is all about. And just because the content on the internet is free doesn’t mean that those eyeballs are not looking. The reality is that the money made in any type of media is eyeballs – and how many of them are looking at ads.
Let’s face it: a subscription to the Wall Street Journal print edition with home delivery six days a week is only ten dollars a month. That’s roughly 41 cents per issue. How can Murdoch’s News Corporation, which is the Journal’s corporate parent, make money from printing words onto pages of paper and then delivering it to my house six days a week? From eyeballs. This is a graph shown recently by Google’s Chief Economist Hal Varian:
Therefore, eyeballs are subsidizing the cost of doing business in print media. It also subsidizes magazines and television. Although newspaper circulation has gone down recently, which is reflected in this graph and shows the numbers have been going down steadily over the years, revenue from ads in more popular mediums has continued to increase.
It’s the revenue numbers that send Murdoch’s blood pressure out of control because those eyeballs still exist, but they are increasingly realizing that they can get general news from the internet. Plus a lot of the time it is more convenient than print because people can quickly read what they want instead of leafing through a bunch of pages.
Take a look at another graph that was shown by Varian:
The first thing that you’ll probably notice is the sea change in spending on cable advertising. But look at the Internet advertising. While nonexistent in 1995, it has indeed grown. Yet for all the posturing about paid content on the internet, the reality based on these figures is that the true age of advertising on the internet perhaps has not yet arrived when you compare it with the other mediums and the ad spending done on those.
So let’s get back to eyeballs. In terms of the digital age, we are now dealing with a huge segmentation of the market for goods and services. Remember, at one time cable was a paid service and didn’t have many ads, if any at all. Now that the cable companies and advertisers realize this is a highly targeted segment compared to broadcast networks, the dollars spent there have skyrocketed.
I know that my site targets those who are developers and early technology adopters. That will not always be the case as Google’s technologies mature into the business market, but that’s the way it is as of right now.
Sites like ReadWriteWeb captivate folks that are into the new frontiers that the web can offer. Both sites need to pay the bills, and so we know what types of people will look at the site and advertise products that readers may be interested in. The catch? You have to look at these ads and read about our sponsors, but you get free information in exchange. I know that ReadWriteWeb also offers highly specialized content for a fee as well, and I will get to that in just a bit.
How do you segment a newspaper like USA Today? You’re basically getting the eyeballs of a huge sample of people, many who will not understand some of the products or services that are being advertised to them. At the same time, the Wall Street Journal is trying to change its reader demographic, becoming more of a general newspaper than a business one. It makes sense that they are trying to change since anyone can get stock information online these days that is more accurate, but how does their ad sales department deal with that?
It will be an interesting experiment for paid content on the internet. For very specialized and thoroughly researched information that cannot be found anywhere else, people will pay fees. But that’s with the understanding that advertisers simply cannot be a part of the equation, or that said information is of a great deal of value, more so than general news. That’s because news simply has already reached a point of no return in terms of direct monetization, and there’s probably no going back.
