Cameron Peron

Controlling every point of our online experience without focusing a few critical elements can transform Google’s position as a cool company in San Francisco into a Costco style provider that we reluctantly accept due to its convenience and commoditization.

What do you think about when you hear the word Google? Entry point to the web. Creativity, innovation and serious $$. Maybe even people buzzing around in a really cool work environment.

I tend to think about a group of guys hell bent on breaking the rules and proving that the American dream still exists for anyone who has a great idea, a clever approach, determination and the skill to make it happen.

Today Google wants to be everything and everywhere online. They started with a search engine. Now they’re a toolbar, email client, GPS/mapping system, a scheduling solution, web-browser… and almost mobile phone amongst other things.

What made them cool was the search engine.

What made them that $$ was their ability to scale and target traffic.

What made them warm and fuzzy was their near Che Guvera revolution approach of going to head to head with the likes of Microsoft and other large companies. I love Google products like Gmail, their RSS feeder, calendar and even media tools like GoogleInsight which we’ve written about before. They’re far superior to other conventional services – especially one you have to pay for – like from Microsoft. Not to mention I feel like I’ve taken something back when I use them.

But seriously… can’t it go too far? Who wants a one stop shop for life? Do you want only your favorite cereal for breakfast every single day? Do you really want the Costco/WalMart experience applied to the internet? It can happen. And it starts by competing against people who not only do a better job but also provide strategic value to one’s business. Most recently it’s happened here:

The Google web-browser. Sure it’s good – but I’m willingly to bet it’s not make a ding in hard core Internet Explores user market. Most likely it will take a larger portion of Firefox, Opera and other browsers.

Google phone. What… iphone 2? I can appreciate that it’s a great entry point to mobile media. But why not focus on creating WAP based client or downloadable applications on a huge variety of phone modes so everyone can access mobile content in a form their already familiar with?

Google’s stands in a position to fit its brand somewhere between that warm fuzzy feeling you might get when walking into a small time local coffee shop and that somewhat sold-out feeling when ordering a coffee you can’t pronounce form Starbucks.

Obviously it’s their creativity that got them started. This same creativity combined with the shear scalability they control could be transform them into one of the same large companies they’ve grown accustomed to taking down in the first place.

So what does the Google/Publicis deal mean for offline media?  The deal could make Publicis one of the biggest innovators in bridging the disconnection between offline and online media.  Imagine a media company that size seamlessly leveraging their core client and creative assets in a new distribution channel.  Of course it could be one of the worst attempts for a traditional media company to reinvent themselves as an online player. :)

Lips sealed.  No one seems to know the valuation of the deal was, since Google finalized the sale on Sept. 10.  This already raises a few eyebrows as to Publicis’s real confidence in the purchase.  Measuring the investment of their newly acquired SEO rich affiliate network - as means to beef up their online marketing activities and presence is still very much an internal issue.

Offline media and performance marketing don’t mix.  It’s understandable that offline agencies from big to small don’t mess with performance marketing - it’s simply not their business.  The giants on Madison Ave. know how to negotiate enormous budgets and build brand campaigns.  Meanwhile, CPA and CPC pricing models are driving traditional impression based CPM models down on the aggregate… primarily from the explosive growth in traffic sourced from search engines and content rich publishers.  Despite this, there is always going to be a demand for brand driven advertisers who measure the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns against massive scales of revenue.

If it’s about branding, then Publicis’s bet may actually pay off. As we all ready know, the real purchase value of Performics comes from it’s advantage in SEO.  This asset combined with their already active search marketing activities - could be extremely lucrative combination for large brand oriented clients.  If you want to look at  a real risk in offline media take a look at CBS.  In their attempt to buy Internet in the last few months, they gambled on huge properties like CNET for $1.8 billion and LastFM for $280 million among others.  Time will tell if and how it will pay off.

At best it will redefine the industry. If the results are good, than large and small advertisers might soon follow.  Better still, this deal stands to legitimize SEO’s shady background by powerful market and economic forces in mass… making SEO and search marketing just another department in both large and small agencies.

To make it happen Publicis and other traditional media companies might consider following the likes of other bold moves and mistakes of acquisitions past.  Seriously.  Look at Yahoo! exodus of executives since the Microsoft deal went down, or is still going through… or whatever status it remains at.   Lack of top level competence from Publicis as well as a growing pains in corporate culture and job security can easily cause key management players an even entire company divisions to walk.

The ability of traditional media to make a successful bid with online media - lies not just in making wise acquisitions but in their management and optimization of a channel they are just beginning to understand.

Google is focused on performance marketing more than ever before. Since Google finalized the sale of Performics to Publicis earlier in August, the focus of the deal has been on the conflict of interest narrowly avoided from its previous acquisition of DoubleClick. Google is the world’s biggest provider of search and its revenue model is built from ad placement within its search engine and publishers using AdSense. 

Let’s look at foundation. Google’s $3.1B acquisition of DoubleClick in March 2008 expanded its reach dramatically via display advertising and affiliate marketing. The affiliate marketing portion of this deal included capitalizing on the advertiser and publisher base of Performics, a division of DoubleClick.

The most interesting part of March’s deal is that Google effectively jumped into performance marketing overnight – with serious potential to take a huge portion of the affiliate marketing industry. Their newly converted Performics affiliate network stood to “compete” against some of the best known names in the affiliate marketing including AOL’s TradeDoubler, Commission Junction and Linkshare. Actually competing isn’t really the right word – maybe obliterating is. With enormous inventory in search and display ads combined with significant reach via search and targeted publisher traffic - they immediately took action by offering AdWords advertisers a bid on pay-per-action beta tool. Now, advertisers could pay for a lead, sale or other action - rather than just a click. The program gave current Google advertisers an additional competitive advertising stream, while leveraging former Performics advertisers via Google’s targeted publisher base.

The results have been somewhat inconclusive. Little publicity or reporting was done outside of the service’s introduction. The program’s pay-per-action beta was active for a sometime before being merged into CPA bidding tool which Google released prior to the deal (in September 2007) . It was a bold move, but not enough to make a serious threat to other affiliate networks. Sure it takes time to make the transition and we won’t know what bottom line revenue was generated until Google’s annual report will be published next year. Nonetheless performance advertising hasn’t taken the Google’s spotlight.

What really happened in August & September? Details of September’s acquisition show that the SEO portion of Performics was center to Publicis’s interest and eventual acquisition. Selling off the SEO division wasn’t must of a surprise as SEO marketing tactics compete against other channels already operated by Google.

So what does Publicis’s acquisition mean for Google’s stake on performance marketing? With the ‘SEO issue’ conflict of interest out of the way - Google stands to finally spearhead performance based marketing – mainly affiliate networks. Most likely Google’s affiliate marketing services, website names and features will change to reflect the results of the deal.  But over time, the same services and pricing models will be slowly enhanced and integrated into a more powerful Google Affiliate Network. We know now that it’s not as easy as turning on a switch. However, the knowledge, publisher base and advertisers from Performics combined with Google’s extensive reach via search and publisher websites - could be the right combination to redefine performance marketing, control yet another online revenue stream and generate serious revenue.

Oui oui… Le performics acquisition :)

Mitigating a conflict of interest within Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick is just one result of this month’s finalization of the sale of Perfomics to Publicis. This week we’re going to take a deeper look into this deal and its effect on Google’s stake on performance marketing, offline media’s slow and stubborn move into online channels and the immediate benefits emerging markets may stand to gain.

Google has released one of its most powerful tools yet – to an awe inspiring silence.

The potential to create highly effective marketing campaigns with outstanding ROI is every media buyer’s holy grail. What if you could take a keyword and generate dynamic reports of market driven data that literally tell you which markets to invest in, which keywords to add/drop and most importantly the trends defining the viability of your markets’ interest? Enter Google Insight.

Generating lists of keywords with similar relevancy to an existing online media campaign is nothing new. We’ve taken for granted the fact that serious campaign creation and management involves many unknown variables and sluggish optimization. GoogleAdwords’s keyword tool and other products on the market have been a media buyer’s right hand man when testing and optimizing campaigns. These tools are excellent but lack market driven data and statistics to transform a mediocre campaign in into real powerhouse of ROI.

Google Insight is truly amazing - and relevant to anyone who’s communicating a product, service or experience. It’s so easy a 15-year-old could generate more effective reports in 5 seconds that would otherwise take a decent media buyer – slaving over multiple spreadsheets and 10+ cups of coffee – days to create. More importantly the “rising searches” section literally tells you which keywords to test. Use the time duration filter to compare lifecycles and growth acceleration curves across multiple geographic markets and search terms.

See Google Insight in action with 2 terms that greatly differ in both in search purpose the expected outcome from a given campaign:

1. Kate Spade. This targeted search term is most likely relevant to e-commerce websites where geo-targeting and an understanding of trends can really drive ROI. Check out the results over a 30 day time period in the US:

East Coast states claim the top 5 in rank (hehe… I know, shocking) . Aside from the “related” keywords that could be added to this to this campaign, the “rising searches” section actually manages your investment in new media for the month. “Kate spade sale” and “kate spade handbang” are in “breakout” status with more than 5,000% change in growth!.

2. Olympics. This term is broad enough that it can be applied to a huge variety of businesses– most likely large brand oriented advertisers like McDonalds, Coca Cola and Nike. Check out global growth over 30 days, 90 days and 12 months:

30 Days:

90 Days:

12 Months:

Apparently New Zealand is most receptive to the Olympics over a 1 year period. Searches made in Australia, New Zealand and Singapore have amazingly consistent search volumes over the same time period. If I were a brand advertiser I would try to focus on trends all at least 60% of my investment in the top 5 markets and jump to the US only 6 months prior to the release of the games with a gradual budget increase.

Haven’t heard of Google Insight? Most haven’t. I haven’t heard much about this in the online media world and nearly zero in mainstream media - but then again who relies in mainstream media for technology and internet news anyway!?

Google Insight is going to change the playing field of internet economics. For those who are serious about e-commerce and online media – a 30 minute daily investment into this tool will no doubt reduce redundant time management and significantly increase revenue streams.