Does Google Ad Planner = Privacy Concerns?
Just a few days after launching Google Website Trends, Google revealed the real purpose of all that nice new data: Google Ad Planner. Launching just yesterday, it is "a research and media planning tool that connects advertisers and publishers." In plain English, Ad Planner enables you to find websites for placing your ads based on behavioral ad targeting and demographics. Figuring out where all that data is coming from has people—including me—scratching our heads. But, I’m getting ahead of myself.
How does this thing work? Well, it’s still in private beta, but from what I can gather, you give Ad Planner the demographics or favorite web sites of your target audience and, according to Google, the tool will…
...return information about sites (both on and off the Google content network) that your audience is likely to visit. You can drill down further to get more detail like demographics and related searches for a particular site, or you can get aggregate statistics for the sites you’ve added to your media plan.
This also sheds some light on how Google is planning on integrating with the recently acquired Double Click.
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Social Banner Ads Continue to Frustrate
Banner advertising has long been the bane of web surfers around the world. Garrish, annoying and ineffective, it’s rare that a campaign actually expresses any level of creativity or effectiveness.
As social networks entered the scene - ripe with rich, detailed demographic data about each and every user - advertisers simply couldn’t resist. But, an odd thing happened on the way to targeting users in online communities. No one clicked on the ads.
It seems once inside the walled garden of Facebook or among friends on MySpace, users weren’t in any mood to search for new mortgage rates or purchase airline tickets and avoided the ads at all cost. In the latest attempt to earn more clicks through banner advertising on social networks, the social media advertising firm SocialMedia launched "social banners," which create banner ads that incorporate you or your friends into the ad. CNet writes:
For example, instead of a banner advertising The Incredible Hulk movie, a social banner would ask which of your close Facebook friends, among a short list, you’d like to invite to see the movie. Or a social banner might inform you that a friend Jim just ranked Iron Man with three stars, and it might ask to "click here to buy tickets at Fandango."
While the intent may be, "to make ads suck less in social networks," said Seth Goldstein, founder of San Francisco-based SocialMedia Networks, this move could bring a backlash similar to the Facebook Beacon uproar from last year. The privacy issues that arise are incredibly complex.
The Word of Mouth Manual
Dave Balter of BzzAgent published a must-read book about Word of Mouth Marketing earlier this week that is definitely worth your time. You can either pick your up your very own copy at Amazon for $45, or you can grab the free e-book version right here. While it may seem like a no-brainer, the purchased version does at least include a limited edition original piece of artwork by Seth B. Minkin.
I read Balter’s Word of Mouth Manual Volume II last night - it’s a quick read at just 119 pages - and it’s chock-full of helpful case studies and ideas about how brand and marketers can be a part of their customers’ conversations without doing what they usually do: absolutely destroy any meaningful dialogue. Even the strategy for promoting the book itself is a strong case study on how to work with bloggers in marketing a book. Balter worked with 20 top bloggers to distrubte the e-book for free and get folks talking about the book and his ideas.
iPhone Helps Turn Marketers into Problem-Solvers
One week after the new iPhone’s debut, some of the most intriguing buzz centers around the development of native mobile applications. For marketers and brand managers alike, this poses one the best opportunities in a long time to create meaningful brand engagement.
Up until now, the excitement over mobile marketing had been trying to deliver relevant ads to various handsets. But the iPhone offers up a more relevant and useful platform for brands to develop applications that provide a real value for their users (And for those of you who track this blog, you know we love marketing ideas that provide a service for customers).
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Google and Yahoo! Join PPC Forces
For those of you who think Google is set on taking over the world, add this to the list: Google pay-per-click ads will now show up on Yahoo! search engine results. The two companies signed a 10 year deal thus further increasing Google’s dominance in the paid-search world.
AdAge put together a great article summarizing a few of the details and I would encourage you to read it.
While this deal is causing fear of rising CPC costs, increased government scrutiny, and Yahoo! becoming more reliant on Google; there are also a few pros such as small business being able to advertise on both Google and Yahoo! from one platform and Google learning from Yahoo’s successful display advertising techniques (especially with Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick).
This won’t affect the consumer for at least another 3 months as Google and Yahoo! have agreed to delay implementation to allow the Justice Department to read the fine print. Hopefully, it wont be Senator Ted Stevens doing the reviewing (see below).