Author Archives: ghotchkiss

More Food for Thought on Google’s Web History Announcement

Yesterday’s announcement from Google about including Web history in search personalization marks a fairly significant development in disambiguating intent on Google.  Consider the implications.  One of the issues I had with the initial implementation of search personalization was that it really only worked when there was existing search history.  That really only covered one in five searches for most of us.  That also meant that personalization showed up most often in areas where you tended to do a lot of searching.  For example, if you search within your industry a lot and tend to go to the same sites over and over again, you would find the site lifted on to your top page of search results.  Of course, if you were doing the typical “vanity” search to see where you rank and you end up clicking on your own site, this would have the effect of lifting your site into the top 10 results.  If anything, this implementation of personalization works to make navigation search a little more efficient.  But I’m not sure it went too far in disambiguating intent, which is the holy grail for any search engine.

With the introduction of Web history, it’s a whole new ballgame in disambiguating intent.  This allows Google to move far beyond the well tred search path and actually taps into your current browsing behavior to try to determine what’s on your mind right now.  If Sep Kamvar’s personalization algorithm is as powerful as I suspect it is, this could dramatically alter the results that you’re seeing.  The promise of personalization is greatest when it can be applied in areas that are new territory for you.  It helps Google interpret just the kind of site you want to see, given your behavior at the present time.

Let me give you an example.  Let’s say you’re looking at buying a new vehicle.  Let’s further say that you’re fairly early in the consideration phase and your visit a lot of sites like Edmunds.com and Autobytel.  This tells Google that you’re looking for information and you’re probably looking at sites that could be comparing your alternatives.  If you’ve already visited sites like Edmunds.com, Google would probably lift those sites into the first search results page.  If Google’s algorithm truly makes a move towards a recommendation engine, what it can then do is find similar sites you may have never considered, based on the characteristics of the sites you have been visiting and make you aware of these sites.  That’s where the real win for the user comes in personalization.  It’s not just providing you a shortcut to sites you are already aware of, it’s in making you aware of new sites you never knew existed, ranked and prioritized according to the PageRank algorithm.  With Web history, Google can track your progress through the buying cycle to be able to match the information site you’re looking for to where it believes you are, based on your current click stream data.

There are other implications that are very interesting to advertisers.  Click paths tend to indicate the life events that you’re currently in the middle of it.  The life event could be a major purchase, planning a holiday, buying a new house, planning for a wedding, or graduating from university.  In each of those instances, there are a number of linked consumer needs that tend to go together.  There’s been a significant amount of research done on how life events generate predictable consumer patterns.  Web history gives Google a window into exactly what is happening in your life right now.  I had written a column about how surprised I was with the glimpse that search history provided into my mindset at any given time.  If you combine that with Web history, you would have a very finely detailed snapshot of both big and small events in my life for any time period.  It gives Google the ability to precisely target search results based on exactly what’s happening to me right now.

But let’s face it, it’s not the search results that Google is focusing on.  Google is altruistic enough to make organic search results the testbed to play with the personalization algorithm, but the monetization opportunities in this are mind-boggling to say the least.  When you combine the ability to precisely target and interpret the mindset of any given consumer with the multiple touch points that Google now owns to provide advertising messaging to that prospect, you have a marketer’s dream scenario.  When I asked Marisa Mayer about this she made it clear that organic results are what they are working on now, but they don’t want their advertising network to be too far behind the curve.  I’m still working my way through the interview making notes but I did want to get this post up because I think from a user perspective there’s some important information here.  For me, the promise of personalization is moving Google to be a true recommendation engine when it gets confident in disambiguating my intent based on my current behavior.  Folding Web history into search history moves Google a quantum leap forward in being able to do this reliably and consistently.

The interesting question will be to see what kind of user pushback comes from the privacy concerns.  Danny Sullivan touched on this a little bit in his post.  Will the trade-off of increased search accuracy be enough to have lots of users opt in? Obviously this is what Google is counting on and that’s why they’re introducing the enhancement in the organic results first.  If they can provide a clear win to the user, than the trade-off seems a lot less formidable.  And when they’re introducing that usability lift in something as benign as organic search results, it seems a little less ominous and invasive.  If they can get us using Web history by giving us a win-win on our search functionality, is a greater likelihood that we’ll leave Web History turned for when they do decide to start rolling it in to their advertising presentation algorithms. Enough users will have it turned on it will give them the critical mass they need to appeal to the early adopter advertisers who want a take it for a spin.

More Food for Thought on Google’s Web History Announcement

Yesterday’s announcement from Google about including Web history in search personalization marks a fairly significant development in disambiguating intent on Google.  Consider the implications.  One of the issues I had with the initial implementation of search personalization was that it really only worked when there was existing search history.  That really only covered one in five searches for most of us.  That also meant that personalization showed up most often in areas where you tended to do a lot of searching.  For example, if you search within your industry a lot and tend to go to the same sites over and over again, you would find the site lifted on to your top page of search results.  Of course, if you were doing the typical “vanity” search to see where you rank and you end up clicking on your own site, this would have the effect of lifting your site into the top 10 results.  If anything, this implementation of personalization works to make navigation search a little more efficient.  But I’m not sure it went too far in disambiguating intent, which is the holy grail for any search engine.

With the introduction of Web history, it’s a whole new ballgame in disambiguating intent.  This allows Google to move far beyond the well tred search path and actually taps into your current browsing behavior to try to determine what’s on your mind right now.  If Sep Kamvar’s personalization algorithm is as powerful as I suspect it is, this could dramatically alter the results that you’re seeing.  The promise of personalization is greatest when it can be applied in areas that are new territory for you.  It helps Google interpret just the kind of site you want to see, given your behavior at the present time.

Let me give you an example.  Let’s say you’re looking at buying a new vehicle.  Let’s further say that you’re fairly early in the consideration phase and your visit a lot of sites like Edmunds.com and Autobytel.  This tells Google that you’re looking for information and you’re probably looking at sites that could be comparing your alternatives.  If you’ve already visited sites like Edmunds.com, Google would probably lift those sites into the first search results page.  If Google’s algorithm truly makes a move towards a recommendation engine, what it can then do is find similar sites you may have never considered, based on the characteristics of the sites you have been visiting and make you aware of these sites.  That’s where the real win for the user comes in personalization.  It’s not just providing you a shortcut to sites you are already aware of, it’s in making you aware of new sites you never knew existed, ranked and prioritized according to the PageRank algorithm.  With Web history, Google can track your progress through the buying cycle to be able to match the information site you’re looking for to where it believes you are, based on your current click stream data.

There are other implications that are very interesting to advertisers.  Click paths tend to indicate the life events that you’re currently in the middle of it.  The life event could be a major purchase, planning a holiday, buying a new house, planning for a wedding, or graduating from university.  In each of those instances, there are a number of linked consumer needs that tend to go together.  There’s been a significant amount of research done on how life events generate predictable consumer patterns.  Web history gives Google a window into exactly what is happening in your life right now.  I had written a column about how surprised I was with the glimpse that search history provided into my mindset at any given time.  If you combine that with Web history, you would have a very finely detailed snapshot of both big and small events in my life for any time period.  It gives Google the ability to precisely target search results based on exactly what’s happening to me right now.

But let’s face it, it’s not the search results that Google is focusing on.  Google is altruistic enough to make organic search results the testbed to play with the personalization algorithm, but the monetization opportunities in this are mind-boggling to say the least.  When you combine the ability to precisely target and interpret the mindset of any given consumer with the multiple touch points that Google now owns to provide advertising messaging to that prospect, you have a marketer’s dream scenario.  When I asked Marisa Mayer about this she made it clear that organic results are what they are working on now, but they don’t want their advertising network to be too far behind the curve.  I’m still working my way through the interview making notes but I did want to get this post up because I think from a user perspective there’s some important information here.  For me, the promise of personalization is moving Google to be a true recommendation engine when it gets confident in disambiguating my intent based on my current behavior.  Folding Web history into search history moves Google a quantum leap forward in being able to do this reliably and consistently.

The interesting question will be to see what kind of user pushback comes from the privacy concerns.  Danny Sullivan touched on this a little bit in his post.  Will the trade-off of increased search accuracy be enough to have lots of users opt in? Obviously this is what Google is counting on and that’s why they’re introducing the enhancement in the organic results first.  If they can provide a clear win to the user, than the trade-off seems a lot less formidable.  And when they’re introducing that usability lift in something as benign as organic search results, it seems a little less ominous and invasive.  If they can get us using Web history by giving us a win-win on our search functionality, is a greater likelihood that we’ll leave Web History turned for when they do decide to start rolling it in to their advertising presentation algorithms. Enough users will have it turned on it will give them the critical mass they need to appeal to the early adopter advertisers who want a take it for a spin.

A Sea-Level Change for Search

First published April 19, 2007 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

After spending a week with thousands of search marketers in New York last week, I think I’ve figured out what search’s problem is.  It’s suffering from low self-esteem.

I said before that search is crossing the chasm.  That certainly seem to be true last week, but to be honest, it took me a little while to figure it out.  It wasn’t till the last day of the show, having lunch with my friend Greg Jarboe, that we hit it, with a little help from Anne Kennedy.

Greg Jarboe’s Gentrification Theory

Both Greg and I felt like the industry was adrift.  It was going through something that hadn’t quite defined itself.  We certainly felt that a sea change was imminent, but we weren’t sure what was entailed in that change.  Greg referred to it as the gentrification of search.  A new wave of bright, shiny respectability was coming to the hard-working but plain-Jane neighborhood of search, first established by people like Greg and myself.  For me, this new influx encapsulated some of what I was seeing — but there was something else here.

One of the noticeable trends I’ve been seeing is the tendency for large organizations to want to ramp up their search efforts internally.  They want to jump into the search pool, but they’re afraid to take the leap with any of the search vendors currently in the space.  They’d rather try to figure it out themselves.

Anne Kennedy’s Epiphany

On the way out of the coffee shop of the New York Hilton, we happened to spot Anne Kennedy, a fellow pioneer of SEM, who put everything in perspective.  Search was moving from early adopters to the mainstream market.  Search was crossing the chasm!

I should’ve seen it much, much earlier.  After all, I’ve written columns right here in the Search Insider saying that this is happening.  But those columns were written from the vantage point of my office in Kelowna, for all intents and purposes a location far removed from the search industry.  Sometimes it’s easier to see a clear picture when you’re standing back a little bit.  When I was in the middle of search, surrounded by it in New York, it was hard to get my bearings.  I knew I was surrounded by a flurry of activity, but I wasn’t sure what the point of all that activity was.  It took Anne’s comment to put it in its proper context.

Is Google Too Big for Search?

The irony here is that as search is gearing up for what should be its finest moment, its time in the spotlight, it seems like the companies that have the most to gain are the ones rushing headlong to leave search behind.

Consider the irony of the two big announcements at the show last week.  First of all we have IPG, one of the gargantuan holding companies in the advertising world, announcing that it has purchased Reprise Media for an undisclosed sum.  Again this is part of the trend for the large advertising companies to quickly ramp up their search efforts in anticipation of the coming firestorm of demand in the search space.  This is the way the chasm crossings work.  If you can successfully make the leap from early adopters to mainstream, there’s a resulting crush of demand that everyone has to rush to meet.

But then you had the big news of the show, Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick for $3.1 billion.  The closer that search gets to the mainstream market, the more intent Google seems to be to build up its rapidly expanding portfolio of non-search marketing channels.  It’s like Google is saying, “Sure we’ve got search.  But search isn’t sexy. It’s utilitarian. It’s direct marketing.  Online video, that’s sexy! Cable TV, that’s sexy!  Auction-based print and radio, that’s sexy!” Google wants to get its hands on those branding dollars — and doesn’t think that search is the way to do that.  To use Jarboe’s gentrification analogy again, just when everyone seems to be considering a move into the inner city neighborhood of search, Google has its eye on buying new property all over town.

Why Search Deserves a Second Look

If this is Google’s thinking, it may be too quick to discount the value of search. To me, there’s vast untapped potential here still.  All the research we’ve done seems to indicate that search is the crux of online activity.  We just haven’t done a very good job of assigning value through the entire buying cycle to the various points where consumers reach out and interact with search.  Online consumer research and brand engagement is a Gordian knot, a complex map of intertwining click-stream paths, winding through various properties and doubling back on itself.  When you start to look at that click stream, one thing becomes very apparent.  Search is the connector that holds it all together.  As we move from point to point and continue to build our brand awareness, we are connecting the dots through a search.  There has to be value to each one of those connections — and as we get better at defining and quantifying it, I believe we will find more and more reasons to shift our budget to some form of search.

It’s almost as if Google (or at least, parts of Google) takes search for granted in its rush to secure the entire landscape of consumer interaction.  With more and more advertisers starting to look at search seriously, maybe it would be a good idea for Google to do the same thing.

Addendum: I wrote a similarly themed post on Tuesday in my blog. Matt Cutts was quick to comment that Google’s search team remains as dedicated as ever and has some great things in store. I hope so, because I think search’s finest hour has yet to arrive.

Google Adds Your Click Path to Search Personalization

You know how when you install the Google toolbar and enable the PageRank feature, it gives you the warning on the EULA that this is not your typical legal  Yada yada?  Ever wondered what they were doing with all that information that’s being streamed back to a Google server somewhere?  Well, today Google announced just what they intend to do with it.  They’re going to use it to personalize your search results.  At least that’s what they’re going to do today. Tomorrow, who knows?

I just had a walk-through with Marissa Mayer and Sep Kamvar of Google’s new plans for personalization.

google1

 

 

In a nutshell, it will take the information gathered through the Google toolbar and use that, in combination with your search history, to personalize your search results.  Up till now only your past search history was used.  Enabling Web history, which is what Google is calling this, is very much a “opt in” process.  Google wants to get a small beta test bed of users so they can get a data set large enough to let Sep Kamvar, the person behind Google’s personalization algorithm, see what he can do with this additional rich set of data. Marissa indicated that this would increase the transparency of the data that Google was collecting about you. Based on the below screenshot you should be able to see exactly the sites that you visited in the past.

google2

If you want to see the nitty-gritty on what it means to sign in  or sign out of web history and what it will look like on the search results page, I would suggest checking out Danny Sullivan ever growing blog post on Searchengineland.  This is breaking news so I haven’t had much of a chance to put my thoughts together.  Like Danny, I’m “growing the post” as I find out more.  I’m going to be going back over my notes with Marissa because I think there’s some pretty significant implications for both users and advertisers in this.

In a column earlier this month I talked about Google moving towards behavioral targeting across their network and this is a huge missing piece.  I asked Marissa specifically about whether behavioral targeting of advertising based on the data collected through the toolbar would take place.  In her words, they want their organic search results to be “a little bit ahead of the curve” but overall, they want their search ads and their search results to be aligned in relevance, which means they need to be listening to the same signals.  Increasingly these will be coming from Google’s personalization algorithm.

Until I get a chance to blog more, here’s a little food for thought.  I had previously posted about Google moving towards behavioral targeting.  For me this makes all kinds of sense.  And there I speculated about what Google might be doing with all that data it collects through the PageRank toolbar.  Again, I seem to be reading my crystal ball into the future because just a few weeks later I got the call that Marissa wanted to talk to me.  And when Marissa Mayer wants to talk to you, you should listen, because it generally means something important is happening at the Googleplex.  So when you start putting pieces together, including this new move to personalization with including Web history, Google’s recent acquisition of DoubleClick, and the ability to behaviorally target people across both are contextual and DoubleClick network, not to mention the search results page, you start to get a picture of where they may be taking this.  There’s a lot more thought required here and I’m going to be trying to carve some time aside tomorrow morning to do another post on this.  I obviously want to look at this from the user perspective.  I think, although they’re limiting this to a beta and it’s very much an opt in process, this will renew the calls against personalization that have been coming from critics around the Web.  Marissa indicated that right now they’re going to be sticking to their threshold of two personal results per page, never knocking out the number one organic results, but she made it clear that that’s a “for now” call and will likely change in the future.  Google will move more aggressively towards personalization on more types of searches and they will impact more results.  A few months ago when I did the original post I said that once the gates are open on personalization the dam will burst and there will be no holding it back.  Today’s announcement ups the ante significantly.

Pete Blackshaw: 10 Reasons Why You Should Keep Blogging

Earlier this week Pete Blackshaw wrote a column in the entitled 10 reasons why he should stop blogging.

So, should I stop blogging?

Seriously, I’m starting to feel really anxious about keeping up with my main blog.

Don’t get me wrong. I love my blog and its topic, but frankly, I’m struggling to keep up. I’m just not cranking out content like I used to, and feel as if I’m contributing “too little too late.” I’m starting to freak about folks potentially sending unsubscribe pings my way, and I just can’t handle the thought of such rejection.

Pete’s not the only one going through this dilemma.  After a year of blogging I found that my blogging output has its highs and lows.  It is hard work keeping a steady stream going and they’re not always going to be pearls.  But I really believe it is worth it. I still get a charge when I’m at a show and somebody walks up to me and says, “I love your blog”.  I can’t help but checking to see if a new post generated some buzz and is getting picked up around the Web.  And I profess to check my Technorati ranking more often than I should.

Adding to the aggregate doubt about blogging was a video appeal by blogger Michael Gray asking bloggers to step away from the keyboard.  If you don’t have anything useful to contribute, don’t regurgitate, just give up.

It’s all blog content good?  No.  Is there a lot of it that’s redundant?  Yes.  Do I waste a lot of my day sorting through crap content?  Yes.  Does that mean people should stop blogging?  No, and I’ll tell you why.  In fact, I’ll give Pete and the rest of you out there who are wondering if this is worth it 10 reasons to keep blogging:

  1. New ideas have to be expressed frequently and in different ways to be heard

    The thing I like most about blogging is its immediacy.  As an idea pops into your head, it’s really not that hard to post to your blog.  That means that blogs are often the seed beds for new ideas.  It’s where we first express them, seeing if they resonate with anyone else out there in our readership.  If they do resonate, other bloggers start picking up the thread and embellishing on the original idea.  Ideas can spread very quickly this way.  And that’s tremendously exciting.  Let’s face it, it takes a while for new ideas to gain traction.  So when new ideas are expressed in different ways in different places around the Web they’re given a better chance to grow and survive.  Blogs are like incubators for new ideas.

  2. Everyone has a voice

    Freedom of speech is enshrined in the Bill of Rights.  We all have voices.  Blogs allow us to express those voices.  It’s not for you or me or Michael Gray to say what is important and what is not important, which voice deserves to be heard and which voice should be silenced.  None of them should be silenced.  It’s your choice whether you choose to listen or not.

  3. You can’t find your voice unless you use it

    The first time you speak up, you usually do so timidly.  The first time I spoke in public, my words barely came out as a squeak.  The more often you choose to express yourself though, the more confident your voice becomes.  When I first started blogging , somebody told me it would take a while for me to find my voice.  To be honest, I’m still not sure if I’ve found it.  My voice seems to vary from post to post.  But the fact is, the more I post the easier it gets to express myself.  Eventually you find your voice, your viewpoint and, more importantly, your audience finds you.  The best bloggers out there have the consistency of message and voice that attracts huge numbers of readers.  But unless you push to keep blogging, you may never find the voice or the confidence to speak out.

  4. Generating dialogue is a good thing

    Blogs are forums for online conversation.  Sometimes the conversations can be affirmative in nature and sometimes they can evolve into debates.  Either way conversations are a good thing.  Ideological debate is a good thing.  Blogs fuel online conversation and that is one of the most positive aspects that the Internet brings to our society.

  5. The Web is a big place

    We have all defined our favorite paths online.  We’ve all identified the blogs and sites that we like to frequent.  Repeating important stories and news isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  You may be reaching an audience who just wouldn’t have heard it anywhere else.

  6. There’s News and then there’s Views

    Most often, when I am passing along a news story ,I try to add my own viewpoint and analysis.  I believe this adds value to the original story and colors it, giving it dimension and perspective.  The best bloggers try to do the same.  It’s one thing to just regurgitate news.  It’s another thing to digest it and come back with thoughtful analysis.

  7. Communication is essential to community

    No doubt about it.  The Internet is a global community and the fundamental glue of community is communication.  Blogs represent the most vibrant form of communication online right now.  It represents the free flow of ideas back and forth between the citizens of this community.  If you shut down blogs, you shut down a substantial portion of communication that makes the Internet the largest, most vibrant, most engaging community that has ever existed in history.

  8. One post can make a difference

    You just never know what the post is that could make the difference.  The idea may seem like a throwaway to you, but once posted it may find it takes a life on of its own and you’ll be amazed by how far and wide it can travel.  Sometimes just expressing your viewpoint about one simple idea can make a difference for someone else out there who reads it. It can open their eyes to a reality they hadn’t seen before.  Paradigm shifting can be a tremendously powerful thing and it can be initiated by a single blog post.

  9. Ideas shouldn’t die alone

    There’s nothing worse than having an idea and never giving it life.  Nothing kills an idea faster than locking it in a dark cupboard.  Ideas need air to breathe and light to grow.  Most of all, ideas need support.  They need to find others who get it and grow it.  Like I said before, blogs are a place where this can happen. By the way Pete, one of your articles did this for me, and I posted on it on my blog.

  10. Not everyone can do this

    This is hard work, and perhaps that’s the best reason to keep doing it. There will be many who try and give up. There will be more than never try in the first place. The latest numbers indicate that there is about 80 million blogs out there.  Pete’s blog has a rank of 21,503 right now on Technorati. That means he’s in an elite group, amongst the top .02 % of all blogs on the web.

Don’t give up Pete..I’m reading!

Google Now in the SEO Biz

Editor Loren Baker over at Search Engine Journal points out nasty little dilemma that Google has bought themselves into.  With their acquisition of DoubleClick they also get DoubleClick’s search marketing arm, Performics.  So what does Google do with the search engine optimization and marketing firm?  A conflict of interest?  Yes, one of fairly substantial proportions.  My guess is that Performics may find itself with a for sale sign on it as Google actively shops it to agencies.  And with agencies recently on buying spree, it shouldn’t be too hard to find a buyer. Check out the comment string as there are some interesting ideas put forward.

Will Search Become Google’s Forgotten Child?

Everyone’s jumping on the “Google dominating the advertising universe” bandwagon.  BusinessWeek ran a article today speculating on Google’s omnipresent domination with their acquisition of DoubleClick plus some recently announced deals with EchoStar’s Dish satellite TV network and Clear Channel’s radio network.  The primal fear even has its own acronym now, FOG, or “Fear of Google”.  But in BusinessWeek’s article there’s one telling quote (emphasis mine):

“To date, Google has had one gargantuan advertising success. It developed an online auction platform enabling businesses, even those with little marketing experience, to easily bid for space to serve tiny text ads related to information Web surfers wanted at a particular moment. Most of these ads—which exist primarily to drive traffic to Web pages and, ultimately, generate sales—run on Google’s own search results pages.”

And there you have Google’s dilemma in a nutshell.  The more aggressive they are extending their network reach into new channels, the more they come to rely on what, for them, has been the golden egg, their search engine.  The “gargantuan advertising success” has actually been search engine marketing’s success.  Google has been riding a consumer initiated wave as buyers have found an incredibly effective new channel to do their research on.  The success that Google has enjoyed by riding that wave has more to do with the concept of search then it has to do with any particularly brilliant Google strategy.  Google has keyed into that success by providing a very effective search tool.  And if you’re looking anywhere for the secret to Google’s success, look no further than their obsession about user experience on their search engine.  They’ve kept it clean, they’ve kept it relevant, and they’ve kept it a favorite choice of millions and millions of search users.  That has given them the ability to monetize a tremendous amount of traffic and flow that money straight into the corporate coffers, enabling them to go on a shopping spree of unprecedented proportion.

I don’t begrudge Google for thinking big and planning to dominate the universe.  It’s really the only direction they can go.  But I would like to hear more people acknowledge the fact that Google success is built completely on the emergence of search as an essential online activity.  And the emergence of that activity is due to a lot of pioneers in the area, not just Google.  In its present form, search is best represented on Google but the very act of searching owes a huge debt to dozens of other companies, including current also-rans like Yahoo, Lycos, Excite, Overture, and the historic footnotes like Infoseek, AltaVista and All the Web.

Because of that I get a little frustrated when search does not get its proper due.  Personally, I believe there is huge untapped potential still in search.  But everyone is so focused on Google’s extension of its empire that I don’t believe search is getting the respect it’s due.  It’s not getting respect from advertisers, it’s not getting respect from agencies and lately, it’s not even getting respect from Google.

I know that Google has some exciting plans for search, primarily wrapped around personalization and I look forward to hearing more about this.  I hope that Google search team remains engaged pursuing the potential of this tremendously effective channel and doesn’t become diverted from this goal by the glitz and glamour of Google’s new marketing channels.  I know the sales teams at Google are very much focused on the network and the other opportunities, seeming to take the power of search, which is currently buying all the lava lamps and free lunches at Google, for granted.

Telltale Signs of a Chasm Crossing from NY

It was an incredibly packed week (and hotel) at SES NY. As you’ve probably noticed, I didn’t get a chance to do any blog posts while I was there. But the good news I had a chance to sort through my inbox and set aside some post worthy tidbits that I’ll try to catch up with in the next week, so I’ll try to make up for lost time.

One of the things I chatted with a few friends about was a strong undercurrent of change in the industry. On the last day of the show I had lunch with Greg Jarboe and followed that up with a Guiness or two in the lounge with Chris Sherman and Matt Bailey. Besides the obvious (Google’s purchase of DoubleClick, IPG’s purchase of Reprise and the recent purchase of Global Strategies by WPP) there’s just a feeling of transition to a new stage for the SEM biz. Jarboe referred to it as the “gentrification” of the business (Greg is so erudite!).

After, in a quick chat with Shari Thurow (yes, we ironed out the wrinkles of our spat) and Anne Kennedy, Anne nailed it for me. We’re crossing the chasm. Isn’t it funny. I’ve written at least one column saying this was the case and did a series for MediaPost indicating we were in for sea level change, but I had to be reminded about it.

Perhaps it was the validation of being surrounded by a bunch of other SEMs. For most of the time, I’m somewhat isolated from the SEM community here in Kelowna. From this vantage point, I speculated that we were ready to cross the chasm but I had the comfort of being somewhat removed from the day to day machinations of the industry. But last week, I was in the thick of it and in the flurry of activity, I was wondering what was going on. It took Anne to point out to me that it was just what I had postulated on a few months earlier. Talk about not being able to see the forest for the trees!

There are a few symptomatic indicators that seem to indicate a chasm crossing is ready to happen:

The mainstream is adopting search, but they’re not sure where it should live. More and more companies are testing the search waters, but they’re hesitant to partner with an outside firm. Their answer, at least in the short term, is to build an in-house team to handle the campaigns. I’m getting this from all sides.

The major agency holding companies have all acquired search expertise. In order to try to stem the in-house tide, the IPG’s, WPP’s and Omnicoms of the world have all gone shopping for SEM expertise.

Awareness of search has moved up the C Level. For the first time, SEMPO’s Market Survey found that the executive team is not only aware of search, but keenly interested in it. This has been an ongoing frustration in the past for search marketers.

With all of the above happening, it’s going to be an interesting time in the search biz. Ironically, just as we’re waiting for the 800 pound gorilla to be crowned, another interesting observation I made last week was for the established search players to be rushing towards the next big thing. Google is stumbling over itself to rush past search, moving a lot of its focus to display, video and every other channel under the sun. I’m not so sure it’s wise to turn the spotlight from search. My gut feeling is it’s finally search’s time to shine.

Anyway, more posts to come this week..finally!

Hello, My Name is Gord and I’ve Been Behaviorally Targeted

First published April 12, 2007 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

I was forcefully fit into the proverbial “other shoes” last week, and it was a disconcerting experience. I was behaviorally targeted in an unmistakable way, and I had to come to personal terms with the new reality of marketing.

I’ve written about behavioral targeting a number of times in the past, but always from a marketer’s perspective. From that viewpoint, there’s a lot I like about behavioral targeting. But last week, the crosshairs drew a bead on my forehead and I became the hunted, not the hunter.

I’m not naïve. I know I’ve been targeted before, but this was the first time that it was obvious enough to register on my consciousness. And I have to tell you, I’m having mixed feelings about it.

Leaving Footprints and Collecting Cookies

In the past two weeks, I’ve been making my travel plans to head to China for SES in May. I’ve been merrily hopscotching around the Web, booking flights, checking hotels and frequenting the typical online travel haunts: Expedia, Orbitz and TripAdvisor. All the time, these sites were jamming my browser with cookies galore. As I went on my way in blissful ignorance, I was definitely leaving a trail (I’m picturing virtual droppings, probably from too many cookies) that obviously caught one advertiser’s attention. Late last week, I went to About.com on a totally unrelated quest (the topic of which escapes me at this time), and there in the top bar was an ad urging me to book my hotel in Xiamen in the next three days on Orbitz or miss out on a $25 discount.

Now, Xiamen obviously caught my attention. It’s just not a destination you see all that often in the typical display ad on a Web site — not Paris, or London, or even Beijing, all of which I might just have chalked up to coincidence. But it does happen to be where SES China is taking place, and  where I’ll be spending three or three days in May. And I haven’t booked my hotel yet. So from a targeting perspective, I had a red laser dot on my forehead. Well done, Orbitz!

Is Ignorance Bliss?

I don’t consider myself a neophyte when it comes to online marketing. I obviously knew what was going on. I understood the mechanics behind it. But this was the first time that it was obvious that I was being targeted, and I’ve got to tell you, it creeped me out a little.

Now, I’m not sure if my level of sophistication here, such as it is, was a good thing or not. Would the average user, less aware of the inner workings of behavior targeting, be more apprehensive or less so? Would they just say, “Wow, how did Orbitz know?” or would they quickly wrap their monitor in tinfoil, certain that there was some unhealthy spying going on, either by aliens or the government?  I’m not sure, but I know that losing my BT virginity has left me feeling a little queasy.

Did Orbitz Bag Its Prey?

So, the collective marketing audience is wondering, did Orbitz succeed in getting my booking? Well, yes, and no. The ad certainly caught my attention. In fact, it totally derailed my train of thought, which could be why I forget why I went to About.com in the first place. But I didn’t book — at least, not yet. I’m still sorting out whether I want to or not. It’s really strange. Intellectually I have totally accepted behavioral targeting and even welcome it as an advertiser, but emotionally and as a prospect, I’m still not sure. I had no idea I would be so prudish about this until it actually happened. I admire Orbitz’ marketing prowess, but I do feel a little violated. Maybe it will just take some getting used to. Until then, I’m sniffing the wind when I frequent my online watering holes and being a little more cautious about the trail I’m leaving behind. After all, you can’t be too careful nowadays. The trees have eyes and ears.

 

Google’s Gargantuan Footprint

First published April 5, 2007 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

A recent blog post by Anil Batra, formerly from Revenue Science, speculates that Google will soon be getting into behavioral targeting.  Another post by A-list blogger Robert Scoble indicates that Google may be dialing down the presentation of sponsored ads for certain queries.  Combine this with a few conversations I’ve had recently with Googlers,  and it seems the company is already setting its sights beyond the search results page when it comes to revenue generation.  One starts to get a sense of the footprint that Google is planning to put down on the future online landscape.

Getting Personal, One User at a Time

To me, the glue that holds all this together is Google’s move towards personalization.  If the company can get that piece of the puzzle right, everything else falls into place behind it.  And personalization moves Google beyond search into a lot of other applicable areas: the Google homepage, G-mail, Google News, desktop gadgets, to name just a few.

One of the issues I have with Google’s move towards personalization is that it stops short of really providing additional value to the average user.  If personalization works well, it significantly enhances our search experience by providing relevancy unique to us.  The signals that Google is watching to power the personalization algorithm are very much the same ones it would need to watch to introduce behavioral targeting of advertising messages.  It’s all about the sites that people visit, the search results that they click on and the path they take online.  If Google can use all these signals to help enhance the search results, it’s not that big a leap to be able to target messaging through its AdSense network on the sites you visit.

Google Everywhere You Turn

The key to all this for Google is ubiquity online.  It need to be everywhere and it’s rapidly approaching that goal.  While the pick-up on things like Gmail may not have been the runaway success that everyone was expecting, Google is beginning to offer enough online touch points to provide continuous interaction opportunities for any given individual prospect.  Consider the touch points Google already controls.  First, three out of every five searches that are launched online, anywhere, happen on Google, according to Hitwise.  That’s 60% of hundreds of millions of searches daily, and that alone gives Google a virtual vice grip on the traffic channels of the Internet.

Next is Google’s AdSense network.  Although it has not publicly disclosed how many sites are in this network, it’s estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands.

And then there’s Google’s toolbar.  In a recent survey we found that about 42% of the participants we interviewed had the Google toolbar installed.  In its full implementation, it tracks every single site you visit and streams this information back to Google servers somewhere.

Add to this the various other Google properties and tools you may interact with.  This could include Gmail or a Google personal homepage, Google gadgets installed on your desktop, Google Checkout, Google Blog Reader, to name just a few. And that list keeps growing.

Finally, there’s Google analytics.  One of the smartest moves that Google has done is introduce Google Analytics as a backend tool, free to Webmasters.  The question is, why would Google offer a fairly robust analytics package free?  The answer is that it gives the company a tremendous amount of data on the backend to supplement what it’s already collecting on the front end through click stream tracking.  This closes the loop, giving Google two views of a massive dataset and allowing extrapolation from those two views.

BT High on Advertisers’ Wish List

When you add all these touch points together, you have the capability of driving the largest consumer-centric behavioral network in existence.  And there’s an appetite for this ability to pinpoint precisely.  In the last SEMPO market survey, advertisers indicated that behavioral targeting was their preferred option, with 78% of them willing to pay a premium for it. If you could offer advertisers the ability to present progressive messaging, tied to consumers’ movement through the buying cycle, with the ability to intercept them not just at the search results page but at various information sites where they would be gathering more information, you would have an extremely effective net in which to capture prospects.

The challenge for Google is to present behaviorally targeted advertising in a way that doesn’t impact the user experience.  And this is likely the only sticking point standing between the search engine and the more aggressive rollout of behavioral targeting for advertisers.  My suspicion is that work is currently underway on the technologies that would allow Google to always present the right message at the right time to the right person.  There is a distinct danger in trying to push that too soon.  It’s one of those things you have to get at least 70% right out of the gate.  But if Google can do this, it’s a distinct win both for advertisers and consumers.  We don’t mind advertising when it’s relevant to our needs.  We only hate the stuff that gets in our way and keeps us from doing what it is we want to do.

Why Google Can Afford to Dial Back Search Ads

And this brings us to why Google can afford to experiment with dialing back the presentation of sponsored ads on the search results page.  A few conversations with different Googlers seem to indicate that its future focus is definitely on the advertising network, rather than the search results page.  If it can get the right message/right place/right time/right person equation nailed down, it can monetize traffic much more efficiently and further improve the user experience.

The key for Google, at least on the search results page, is keeping that top-of-page real estate highly relevant.  The fact is, over 50% of all the clicks on the page are going to happen on the first three or four listings, whether they’re sponsored or organic.  Another fact is that we don’t mind a mix of highly relevant sponsored and organic links at the top of the page, but we do mind having nothing but sponsored ads in the top four Golden Triangle locations.  Our tolerance for this advertising drops like a rock with the lessening of relevance in the ads presented.  If personalization and behavioral targeting would allow Google to further tweak the relevance of these ads and get it right more often, the monetization naturally jumps dramatically.

In our last eye tracking study we found that Google was the most efficient at monetizing traffic to the search results page in the long term.  Although Microsoft and Yahoo were more aggressive in presenting ads in the top real estate, Google managed to maintain its click-through rates on both first time and subsequent visits to the same page of results.

Given the possible paths that Google could pursue (and the huge revenue-producing opportunities that lie down those paths) perhaps its mission statement should change from organizing the world’s information to always presenting prospects with the right marketing message at the right time. This certainly aligns better with its recent moves into every marketing channel imaginable.