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See More on Google versus The US Government

I lot of friends, including my wife, have said to me, "why are you so harsh on Google lately?" This kind of surprises me because I don't think I have been. Sure this is the third article I've written on Google as of late and you are probably wondering if I may dump blospot and pop over to Typepad instead.

Let me set the record straight. I love Google and the products that they bring to the marketplace. I also know a lot of people at Google and they are all great. Google also brings a ton of competition to the marketplace and, it didn't hurt that my former employer was part of the IPO group.

However, they are in it to make money, just like everyone else. Have you seen their stock price recently and their marketcap? It is outrageous. You know what else you need to learn about Google? How about their corporate mantra? Read #4 and #6. #4 is titled Democracy on the web works and #6 is You can make money without doing evil. Interesting huh? Let's see how democracy on the web and making money without doing evil has been forgotten or at least thrown out temporarily when it comes to making money.

Democracy on the web
First, Google decides not to help the United States Government in understanding how existing filtering on the web protects children from porn and predators. It IS a primary part of a ruling on the COPA act. Now, they are the only ones from the Big 4 that stood up to the Government. Some people think that Google is standing up to the US to protect individual freedom and who knows, first this data and then they hand over PII information on individual's searches.

Last time I checked, the US Government, the best Democracy on the great blue spot in the Milky Way protects our individual rights and not Google. And, you know who basically asked for the check on the existing filtering technology - The Supreme Court. Now lets look at the other side of the spectrum - China.

China and Google - Perfect Together?

China - the last time I checked was Communist. You remember those people, right? They were pretty popular up until 1989 or so, when Reagan's pressures finally led to the crumbling of the Soviet Empire and only really left Cuba and China as strong Communist nations.

Fast forward to 2006 and everyone loves China now a days because you guessed it - a billion or so people buy a lot of goods; that is when their government allows them to make some money. You know what the Chinese still practice - good old government censorship. Freedom of speech in China, the kind like we enjoy in the USA, does NOT exits. Hell, you can't even get a good search result without some form of censorship.

Now, Google decides to help the Chinese Government continue to oppress their people by making it easier to censor search results. No, not the Google. we can make money without doing evil company. Yes that Google; well maybe not the Google that originally wrote those words, but the Google that is now making a ton of money. Read this article from CNN entitled Google To Censor Itself in China to see for yourself.

I don't know about you, but when the same company decides to stiff the Democratic US Government in the name of freedom and then turns around and helps a Communist China continue their oppression, one has to wonder who we are dealing with. Maybe Google should re-read their Corporate Values Statement again and decide if they really want to make some money the free speech, democratic way which up until now has helped their stock grow from about $90 to $433.

Think I'm the only one that feels this way - check out Bambi's article over at CBS MarketWatch (require free registration) titled Google Shows Its True Colors. Again, makes you want to move your blog to Typepad.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

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Birthday Gift 3 of 3

It is January 26th and I think I’ve extended my birthday as long as I can. So, let’s finish up handing out some birthday gifts.

When last I wrote about my birthday gifts, I examined how audience duplication rates can impact your media buying strategy. Basically by understanding your duplications, you don’t have to spread your marketing dollars around. So, that brings us to the next strategy, which is building relationships and getting volume discounts.

Building Relationships
Like all things in this country, media buying depends on whom you know and what your reputation is. Do you like to beat up publishers and/or agencies? You do? Well, guess what, you are probably paying more for the same impression than the next guy. Wouldn’t you mark up your rates with a handling fee for a tough client? I would, no matter how much you spend. If you treat your publishers badly, you will probably burn out your account team, if you even get one, resulting in retraining. Sounds familiar, huh?

Building great media relationships is a pretty straightforward process. Just be honest with what your goals are and try and share as much data as legally possible. I had no issues with sharing click and conversion data with the publishers so they can optimize and see how they were doing. Of course, I got legal approval to do this. Plus, it doesn’t hurt to share your overall media buying strategy. As some of you know, I had a standard stump speech that I would give whenever I met a new member of the publisher’s team.

Remember build good relationships. If you have trouble with that, remember one of my favorite personal quotes:

Be nice to people who give you money, serve you food, provide you with data, and sell you media.

Volume Discounts, Baby
So, now you are armed with duplication rates and good relationships with your media counterparts. Now what? Easy, buy media on as few sites as possible that give you the reach that you are looking for. That way, you’ll maximize the amount of money spent on the sites, probably get a good account team, and then you’ll enjoy volume discounts.

What? Don’t think it is that simple. It is. How do you think the company I formerly worked for was rated as the 17th largest online advertiser in the United States? We didn’t spend as much money as the University of Phoenix, which is EVERYWHERE. Seriously, we were ranked that high because of the three simple steps I outlined over these past few posts – duplication rates, relationships, and volume discounts.

That’s all there is. Happy birthday

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

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Google and The Government Part 2

A few days back I wrote an article on Google, The Internet and The Government writing that I found it odd that Google was the lone internet giant to withhold non-PII data from the Government as it investigates how effective existing filters are for the Child Online Protection Act (COPA).

Well it seems that I'm not the only one that thinks it is a little odd. If you read the subpoena found on my original post on the subject, the Government claims it bent over backwards to work with Google, but to know avail.

Read this article today found in Marketing Vox, titled Outing Google's Dirty Little Secrets. Or how about this article over at Forbes.com titled Why Google Won't Give In. Interesting huh?

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

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Google, The Government and The Internet

In yesterday's Wall Street Journal there was an interesting story titled In Threat To Internet's Clout, Some Are Starting Alternatives (link here for seven days) . Basically, it talked about how the US Government, specifically the Commerce Department, oversees ICANN for assigning web addresses and developing all those nifty .xyz's like .XXX for porn sites (coincidently it is delaying this assignment). A lot of foreign countries don't like the fact that the US Government, for all intense purposes, owns the internet and can shut down any internet suffixes in the event of a war or terror attack.

Now, what I found fascinating about this article is how fearful a lot of countries are that we could shut down a part of the internet. So, under an anti-Bush cover, they said they need to build their own country specific internet. These new country internets would allow access to ICANN addresses but not the reverse, in effect, shutting themselves out of US traffic.

I have nothing against setting up back-up plans, but one has to wonder why something that is working so well and has brought the world closer together, would need competing technologies, which would in effect, split the world up again. I think the only group of people that needs to fear discrimination are the folks that are interested in .XXX sites.

Speaking of adults sites, did you see the news regarding Google and the US Government today? It seems that in order to comply with the Child Online Protection Act of 1998 that President Clinton signed into law, the government must prove that existing "filtering software are less effective that the statutory restrictions in protecting minors" from you guessed it sexually explicit material. Remember this is a law President Clinton signed into law.

In order to prove this, the Government needs non-PII data from Google, Yahoo, MSN, and AOL. And you know who refused? You know smart guy - Google.

Now I'm not going to debate the merits of the law and by reading the subpoena, you can see that the Government tried to work with Google, but Google refused. Personally, I think it is about time that Google grew up and realized that it is not some cute little search site and has to behave like one of the big boys. A company with $118 Billion market cap and likes to compete with MSN and Yahoo, should know that if you get big and rich enough, eventually the US Government pays attention to you.

Don't agree with me? Read the subpoena for yourself and decide.

Morals of the story here? 1 - the US Government is in control of the internet. 2 - be careful what you search on - you never know who is looking. 3 - You want to run with the big dawgs, get out of your Cali cube!!!

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

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Advertising Today Jan 18 - The Bad and The Ugly

Time for this week’s installment of The Bad and The Ugly courtesy of two articles I read yesterday and today.

First The Bad

In today’s Wall Street Journal, there is an article interviewing Richard Castellini who is VP, Consumer Marketing for CareerBuilder.com. The article describes CareerBuilder.com’s strategy for advertising on this year’s Super Bowl. Among other topics covered is using monkeys in advertising and their strategy for running the ads. And, that’s when I started thinking about monkey business for Super Bowl Advertising.

The rationale for running last year’s ad was that brand perception in the marketplace lagged competition (ie, Hotjobs and Monster) and the ads were a great way to get the message out and energize the company. Plus, when they looked at the results they saw record gains in traffic and search the week after the Super Bowl. They seemed very proud of these accomplishments and looked forward to this year’s advertising.

Hmmmm – it seems to me that they should have used the advertising dollars on improving their product (when was the last time you used their site?) instead of spending $2 million per 30 seconds to drive traffic to their website and jazz up their employees. No wonder marketing departments sometimes get a bad reputation in companies.

Now The Ugly

In yesterday’s MediaPost there was an article that WhenU and 1800Solutions are bundled with download disasters. What this means is that these two marketing tools are bundled with - you guessed it – Spyware. This makes my stomach roll around in fits.

What makes advertisers think that they could use WhenU.com to get legitimate traffic? With all of the improvements with ad serving and legitimate behavioral targeting, why not just avoid these types of Spyware companies?

Are you using either of these two for your internet advertising? Unless you are in the porn or gambling business maybe you should just stop it. Once you get 1800Solutions stuck on your PC and can’t remove it, maybe then you’ll try a legitimate alternative.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

The New Blog on AT&T

Last week I wrote a blog critiquing the New, New, New AT&T advertising campaign and it occurred to me that I made an error. Not a big one mind you, but an error nonetheless and I wouldn’t want to ever be accused of spreading non-truths. Stay with me on this one.

I pretty much wrote that I thought the $100 million advertising campaign relaunching the new, new, new, and really new AT&T was a complete waste of money. For example, why spend all of that money in the New York market when pretty much the brand name was still recognizable. If you wanted to spend that kind of money, it should have just been spent in SBC territories. Look at all of the red spots on the map; that’s pretty far away from the New York market!!! You also could have saved the money for the inevitable rebranding of Cingular back to AT&T Wireless.

Anyway, all day long you can’t turn on ESPN Radio without hearing that the show was brought to you buy, the really, really, really new AT&T and everywhere you look on the internet you can find an AT&T ad. Heck, the only place that is safe is watching Josie and the Pussycats reruns on the Boom Network with my kids.

BTW – which one is your favorite Pussycat? My favorite was Melody – kind of an early version of Chrissy Snow.

Oops sorry about the diversion. So, I did make an error in describing the campaign as a complete waste of time. It is not. The new, new, new, new, really – I promise it is new AT&T is a complete win for the media agency, publishers, newspapers, radio shows, heck anyone that has advertising space to sell is winning out on this campaign. I even had an ad on my blog, but I didn't get any money from it because none of you readers clicked on the ad. Shame on You!!!

The folks that got any slice of this media buy (except for me) will have a great quarter and I hope some of my friends did make their 1st quarter – oops what am I talking about, 2006 goal in the first month of the year. Congratulations – now go switch jobs before someone asks you to beat out your 2006 numbers.

That’s if for today. Welcome to the new, new, new, new, new, new, new

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Birthday Gift 2 of 3

Well, it is over a week since my birthday and I’m still in a giving mood; I’m not sure why because only little kids string their birthday celebration out as long as this. In the last post I decided to give away some of my most treasured secrets when it came to how I turned Harrisdirect into the 17th largest US advertiser on the internet. Unfortunately for you, I waited until this post to give anything away. Oh and one more reminder, these are my personal strategies for online advertising; nothing proprietary to any former employer is being revealed.

Audience Duplication and The Internet

Are you like me and visit a specific site more often than others? You know the kind of sites that are called Yahoo! or MSN and perhaps you even have a customized homepage with one of them. Then from those sites, you go on your merry way to other sites. Some of my personal favorites are Backstreets, WSJ, World of Warcraft, and NY Times. Of course, each one of these sites is putting a cookie on my PC and as well as any 3rd party ad servers that are serving ads on the behalf of advertisers.

Bingo I’m the same cookie visiting multiple web sites. In all likelihood, the individual sites don’t know where else I’m visiting and they certainly count my visits and impressions when selling to potential customers.

Think about how often you web surf. Everyone does it. That’s why the big portals like Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, and even Google are in the game of building tools and adding content to keep you in their family of sites longer. The more visits and the longer the length of stay, the more money they can charge advertisers for the traffic on the site. You didn’t really think that Google is not in the business of making money did you?

However, there is one type of company that knows the duplication rates. They are the 3rd party ad servers and any other types of tracking companies. That’s due to the unique cookie placed on your PC.

Now How Do You Use This Knowledge?

Quite simply it means, don’t waste your advertising dollars on multiple sites within your category. You need to know what your actual audience duplication rate is on your ad buy, not just what publishers or research tells you. And, the best source of that data is your 3rd party ad server because it is centrally serving your advertisements across your media buys.

In the example above, let’s say you are looking for my demographic and have an ad buy on NY Times and Yahoo. Use your ad server to figure out what the duplication rate is between the two. What you’ll find out is that every site in your ad buy will have a huge overlap with portal type sites and perhaps an enormous overlap with other publishers. You’ll be able to eliminate a site or two from your media buy, thus making yourself more efficient and perhaps even plowing those dollars into another site with unique traffic or move the dollars into a site already in your ad buy. The latter part is for the next addition of my birthday gift to you.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric