cameron peron

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.

Recently both Google and Yahoo made steps to allow users to opt-out of personalized ad severing provided of cookies. As of a few days ago, Google implemented a procedure effectively allowing users to opt-out their from extended content network including AdWords, Google Syndication as well as DoubleClick.  Yahoo is following suit with full opt-out implementation at the end of August.

This bold step by the two biggest names in search are not in response from market factors – but rather to a hearing held by the Senate Commerce Committee. In short the hearing questions 1) the ability of large companies to be responsible for data they collect on behalf of their users and 2) the arbitrage between a user’s understanding and of what is being shared about them against actual data collection and interaction.

Do we really care? In the last 15+ years we’ve grown accustom to sharing highly personal information about ourselves over the internet.  Privacy has always been a significant issue since the first days of connecting online via BBS, prodigy’s internet service (remember them?!) and the like.  Granted, privacy is highly valued in the minds of every American – which might explain why similar inquires haven’t been made to scale in other Western countries.  However, since those “early” days so much has happened:

• We subconsciously trust companies at an “evaluation” level. We’ve traded real personal information in return for free web-based internet accounts, social networks, shopping portals and many other services that make our lives easy, fun and exciting.
• That trust is tested in real time. The internet has made Adam Smith economics without the big “G” for government a real thing.  When an internet based business tests the limits of what it will do with its user information – the inherent nature of the internet both allows us to learn about it, and enables us to to act on it.  Case in point the 2006 AOL data scandal.  By in far in Western countries, such exploitations of a nurtured relationships haven’t happened on a doomsday level scale.
• Network effect of sharing information.  With more than 70% of American homes connecting online we’ve come to a near subconscious understanding that sharing information about oneself isn’t that bad given the fact that everyone else does it too.   This effect is highly scaled in all dimensions of American society – as well as other Western countries.

The real issues at hand should be protecting – not distracting people.

Seriously. With google and yahoo handling zillions of searches every day, that fact that non-identifiable information regarding our internet browsing behavior in exchange for convenient search and targeted ads hasn’t actually harmed anyone. I agree that unsolicited advertising via spam and other annoying less than scrupulous tactics are evil; and the government holds a much needed place in consumer protection.  However, targeted ad-serving enabled by cookies truly makes the experience of search more effective for the user (anyone) and ROI effective for a provider (google).

The implementation of cookies have made advertising more like marketing. Imagine a situation where the communication between a user and advertiser is completely market driven, placed with unparalleled targeting and actively searched by a targeted user base.  Yes this freaks out offline advertisers :).  If the model wasn’t appreciated  – the market would move in mass to other search providers without government based initiation.