In preparation for my post this week, I read the article from the May 22nd issue of Wired Magazine titled Secret of Googlenomics: Data-Fueled Recipe Brews Profitability. I believe this article sums up the amazing revolution that Google has introduced into the advertising world perfectly. Years from now we are going to look back at Google as the true innovators of this new market place, defining the course it has taken with precision calculations and most importantly a credible way to demonstrate the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of key word search advertising.
In my later years of undergraduate work I often found myself asking “what differentiates one search engine from another?” Each seemed to get their results to you in a timely fashion and the interfaces appeared to be relatively similar, but as I have evolved and began to form a more acute eye about presence online and adverting I have started to see the differences. In the Wired Magazine article the author discusses how Google has worked to make their advertising less obtrusive. So often the majority of advertising we are exposed to is dictated to us and rather blatantly: billboards on a clean highway, radio commercials after every third song, TV commercials after eight minutes, pop-up ads on a webpage. Google has found a way to surface their advertising content subtly, yet effectively. They are able to get advertising to users that are looking for specific items. This approach is extremely effective in a few different ways. Advertisers will want to advertise with Google because they know that Google is going to surface their ad only to persons searching on terms that relate to the ad they have placed. The likelihood of users clicking on this ad, learning more about a product and converting to a potential action is far more likely than that of a pop up or banner ad on a website. Essentially, Google is getting ads to interested parties as opposed to addressing all of the eyeballs of the site. The other side of this story is that Google has a pedigree among its customers in that individuals using Google to search know the consistent look and feel that they will experience and know where ads versus searched content will be located. This trust that is created between the customer and Google is extremely valuable, so much so the term Google is now part of our common parlance and is even defined by Merriam-Webster as “ to use the Google search engine to obtain information about (as a person) on the World Wide Web.”
Google’s approach to the keyword auction was again something I struggled with but the more I was exposed to it, the more understood. This method is rather ingenious in that it gives maximum value to Google but also allows Google to source the crowd to dictate that value of a particular word and position. This tactic once understood can be successfully implemented by and advertisers with a specific budget so that they can efficiently spend their advertising dollar on those words that will give them the best chance for conversion
The other item that I have always struggled to understand until recently was why Google invests in so many products and then gives them all away: Gmail, GoogleDocs, GoogleMaps, GoogleEarth, GoogleCalendar, YouTube, etc. The fact that they more eyeballs Google can get onto the web, the better chance they will be able to sell advertising and keywords. Google has created a suite of tools that are high quality, easy to use and integrate very well with one another. Google launched their own browser this year, Chrome that is set to compete with the behemoths in the browser world, Internet Explorer and Firefox. This desktop application will allow users to now surf the web with a tool powered by the Google engine and bring users that one step closer to Google search and in turn one step closer to clicking on those sponsored ads and generating revenue for Google.
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