News flash! Google makes a lot of cash on paid search ads. Phew. I couldn’t keep that ‘news’ in any longer. We are so used to that element of Google and the online space that it is really just viewed as a fact of life and not much else thought is given to it unless you are a PPC ‘guru’ (fyi – if you actually use that terminology to describe yourself (others doing it TO you doesn’t count) just know that people laugh at you behind your back). You buy the ads, people click on them and then you try to figure out if they bought something as a result.

Based on the success of this model you would think that the ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ mentality would hold sway at a place like Google. Fortunately, it doesn’t. I say fortunately because there is not a lot business products and / or models that have maintained their leadership position by not changing and evolving (remember IBM’s Big Blue train wreck due to not paying attention?). As a result Google is making some adjustments to their paid ads presentation. The official Google blog tells us.

Text is often useful, but sometimes videos and pictures are a more effective way to receive information. For example, if you want to learn a magic trick, a video showing you how to perform the trick is likely the best result. So over the past few years, we’ve blended videos, images, maps and more into the search results on Google.com.

It also makes sense to provide you with richer types of information in the ads. If you’re looking to buy your mom a new handbag for the holidays, for instance, you might want to see pictures, prices, the addresses of boutiques in your area and a map of how to get there — all within the ad.

To provide a better search ads experience, we’ve been developing and testing a variety of new ad formats. These formats are focused on giving you the information you need, while retaining what you love about Google advertising: that the ads are relevant and useful.

Hard to argue with that thinking.

Here are the examples given on the blog for the new variety of ads you may be seeing.

Video in the ad

More Links in the ad

Maps and directions in ads

Images and pricing in ads

Chain store locations in ads

Comparison ads

The post closes with a nice summation from Susan Wojcicki, VP, Product Management

While we experiment with new formats, we’ll remain loyal to our core principle: that getting the right ad to the right person at the right time matters. As we continue to think up innovative ways to give you the information you want, you’re likely to see even more ad formats until we pinpoint the most useful, relevant and engaging ones. We’ll keep trying new things until we discover the “perfect” ads that improve your overall search experience.

All I have to say to these ads and the thought behind it is ‘well done’. Who needs Rupert Murdoch anyway (Did I just type that? My bad.)

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I have spent a considerable amount of time in the past year watching the decline and fall of the newspaper empire. At times I have had a ‘you get what you pay for’ take on the situation while at others I find it sad that an important industry is in a rapid downward spiral. Now add to the mix the musings / rantings of Rupert Murdoch and his thought that he can revive his industry through his proposed tactics and you are close to a three ring circus with all clowns and no ringmaster.

You see, when I get the most value out of a newspaper it really has nothing to do with the hard news. In fact, I have already heard most of the news that I care about before a newspaper gets my fingers dirty (which I think is one of the cool things about newspapers because there are fewer tactile experiences in the online world). What I devour though in the newspaper is any investigative reporting. Anything that took time to compile and either promotes someone doing good or exposes someone doing bad. That’s one place where the printed ‘news’ works well. There could be others as well.

I would like to propose some possible solutions / options for newspapers to consider.

Let hard news ‘reporting’ be online and embrace it. The Internet is becoming a more real time medium and the printed word will not be able to compete. As a result, I would love to see in a newspaper a 4-6 page section that is just chock full of snip-its about news items. Just the facts. No opinions. Just a strong aggregation of the high points and no one’s opinion attached. Let me decide what to do next after you have gathered it up for me. Stop telling me what to think.Tell me what you think but don’t force me to think it. Now I am not suggesting that you go the Newsweek route and just have all op-eds all the time because quite frankly I hate that format. It’s arrogant and it is designed to divide and conquer. We have enough divisiveness in this world. What if you just had a strong stable of consistent op-ed type players who clearly identify where there allegiance is and then provide that content for their audience as the other side of the ‘news’. If I don’t like one or the other then I either don’t read it or, even better, I read it to be better informed. Present both sides of arguments REGULARLY as part of your format rather than trying to look balanced by occasionally bringing in someone from the other side as a sacrificial lamb for your readers to offer up to their ideological god.Be truly balanced. Stop taking sides for goodness sake. This Washington Post v Washington Times, right v. left crap is just that. Crap. I would LOVE to see a newspaper talk evenly about both sides of the same coin. That would take guts but I think there is a real market for it. I would read that one for sure.Recognize the real audience. The printed word is more for the thinker, the ponderer (I made that word up so sue me) and the person who wants to digest the news. Online is for the ADHD world we live in of ‘read and reject’ and ‘consume and dsipose’. The quick hit. The surface player. Let the online world serve the ‘real-timers’ and you serve the thinkers. Since an investigative technique takes time to put together there won’t be the ‘it’s old news before the ink hits the paper’ issue.Make a difference. As I stated earlier I think that a newspaper that was out there uncovering the good, the bad and the ugly of the world with long-term investigative pieces that dig deep and create change and impact would be awesome. You would have less staff because you were not concentrating on the minutiae of each insignificant story. Leave that to the online quick hit environment. Be a true change agent. I would pay for that and I think advertisers would to.Embrace bloggers and tweeters. Rather than view the real time nature of the web as a threat and somehow ‘beneath your standards’ embrace it for your readers and help them sift through it. What if you put yourself in the position of telling your dedicated readers that “we trust this or that blog” because of the following reasons. That would be cool. Bloggers would then be a much different animal if your could have a frienemy or co-opetition like relationship rather than a completely adversarial one.Let the engines index your content. This one’s easy. Don’t be an idiot.Stop playing political games. You report news not set public opinion. When you choose sides you actually lose credibility. That’s not reporting that is campaigning.

As always there is more and I would love to hear your thoughts. If there is a paper that is doing some or all of these please let me know. Where else could newspapers evolve and take full advantage of the new world media order rather than act like there is a way to preserve their no longer relevant status quo?

Thanks for reading and have a Happy Thanksgiving.

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In a word: branding. As a brand, both through their own efforts and through sheer luck, Google has been able to position itself as the #1 online brand in the US according to Forrester Research. Others among the top ten, including Yahoo, Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft, have generated some of the same emotional responses from their fans.

The top ten brands (note that respondents selected two from a list):

Since 2007, MySpace suffered a precipitous fall in brand favoritism. Yahoo and eBay also suffered. Amazon saw sufficient growth to move from distant third to nearly tied for second; Google grew significantly in its #1 spot. Facebook and YouTube (and what the crap, Sony?) joined the list. Interestingly, both Microsoft and Apple saw small growth over that time.

So what qualities made these online brands stand out in respondents’ minds? Forrester points out that we might expect attributes like prestige, popularity, speed and “the social.” And we’d be wrong.

Interestingly, some of the same characteristics that associate well with offline brands: trustworthiness, helpfulness and relevance to the consumer were the top-named attributes of these brands. (In case you’re wondering, Amazon was voted most trustworthy, Google most helpful and Yahoo, Amazon, Facebook, eBay and Microsoft most relevant.)

There is one point that the report makes that I don’t know if I buy:

Yahoo! gets it right with “Y!ou” re-positioning. Yahoo!’s brand revitalization strategy is right on target, taking rivals on directly and clarifying its fuzzy image. Its core focus is on “relevance,” a top-tier attribute that currently doesn’t have a clear online leader. Yahoo! rivals Facebook and Microsoft show some traction here, but relevance is a relative weakness for Google. Yahoo!’s
new $100-million advertising effort also highlights “fun,” another critical attribute where Google comes up short. To drive its global revitalization, Yahoo!’s new CMO brought in Landor Associates and Goodby, Silverstein & Partners to work with its main agency, Ogilvy & Mather. It launched its campaign with big TV and outdoor buys to “root the brand position.” It is following this with multichannel messaging — including explainers on its own site — around product proof points.

I agree that Yahoo’s image had grown fuzzy and that taking on its rivals directly would be helpful, but are we thinking about the same campaign?

Has there been more to the campaign than that one cringe-worthy commercial? (Because seriously, I wince every time I come across it on a Yahoo property.) It didn’t say “fun” to me (well, I guess it did, just not that “fun” had anything to do with online) and it definitely didn’t clarify their brand image. (How is emphasizing that “we’re as diverse as every single human on the earth—I mean, we’re just like you!” clarifying anything?)

I guess we’ll have to see the “explainers” and “product proof points” to see if the rest of the campaign is effective. But so far, I’m not buying it—especially not when Yahoo’s brand has taken a hit in not only this survey, but others that correlate directly with the campaign timeline.

What do you think? How have these brands acquired these attributes? Is Yahoo repositioning itself to take on more favorable attributes?

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Can you tell the difference between these two ads?

Look closely:

Well the one on the bottom just made the founders of Teracent, very, very rich!

OK, that’s not quite the same example that Google just gave over at the official blog, but it did announce that it plans to acquire Teracent.

What does Teracent do?

Teracent’s technology can pick and choose from literally thousands of creative elements of a display ad in real-time — tweaking images, products, messages or colors. These elements can be optimized depending on factors like geographic location, language, the content of the website, the time of day or the past performance of different ads.

This technology can help advertisers get better results from their display ad campaigns. In turn, this enables publishers to make more money from their ad space and delivers web users better ads and more ad-funded web content.

Think of it as multi-variate testing for your banner ads.

No news yet on the price paid and the deal is subject to final closing conditions.

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So I had to open my big mouth on my previous post today and say that Facebook is keeping its nose clean with regard to news as of late. I guess it still is despite this particular incident that happened to a woman living in our neighbor to the north, Canada.

You remember Canada. The place where Facebook had to adhere to their privacy policies for threat of shutting them down? Well, I wonder how that privacy deal is working out because it looks like companies working on Canadian soil may need a lesson in privacy. The CBC reports

A Quebec woman on long-term sick leave is fighting to have her benefits reinstated after her employer’s insurance company cut them, she says, because of photos posted on Facebook.

Nathalie Blanchard, 29, has been on leave from her job at IBM in Bromont, Que., for the last year and a half after she was diagnosed with major depression.

The Eastern Townships woman was receiving monthly sick-leave benefits from Manulife, her insurance company, but the payments dried up this fall.

When Blanchard called Manulife, the company said that “I’m available to work, because of Facebook,” she told CBC News this week.

Now before you get your knickers in a twist, I am not defending this woman. Honestly, I don’t really care if she is trying to get over on a company or not. I have too many other things to worry about.

What does make me wonder is how the insurance company accessed her Facebook account if they were not allowed by Ms. Blanchard? My guess would be that someone at IBM who is her ‘friend’ on Facebook turned over some data but I am not a private investigator and any speculation as to how this happens stops here.

What doesn’t stop here is where are lines going to be drawn moving forward. Of course, if you are ignorant (or even stupid) enough to put damning evidence on Facebook then that’s nothing that anyone can control. What will be considered actual evidence as retrieved through social media?

The story says

She said her insurance agent described several pictures Blanchard posted on the popular social networking site, including ones showing her having a good time at a Chippendales bar show, at her birthday party and on a sun holiday — evidence that she is no longer depressed, Manulife said.

Huh? What if she was just trying to get undepressed (is that even a word?) and and part of the process was to share her ‘happiness’ with others? Where will a line be drawn on this kind of stuff? In the US it’ll like land in the 9th Circuit because if it’s weird that’s where it goes.

Anyway, what’s your take on this one? Should the insurance company be ale to use Facebook as evidence if they were not directly connected to her account? Is finding out information in Facebook any different though than investigators digging to find evidence any way they can? Or will these kind of stories just always be part of the social media world we live in and we just need to make sure to keep our side of the street clean?

Fire off before you head out for the weekend. We’d like to hear from you.

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A confession.

Sometimes I use Bing.com.

Stop looking at me that way. I said I “use” Bing.com. I didn’t say I enjoy it! In fact, I “use” Bing.com when I’m shopping online and want to get the best price. Bing has a pretty cool shopping engine and I can get up to 10% cashback with its cashback program.

See? I use Bing.com.

The problem is, that use does not result in me using the search engine for any other task. And that is the issue I see with rumors that Bing is willing to pay News Corp and other news organizations to provide their content exclusively to the Microsoft search engine. The FT reports:

Microsoft has had discussions with News Corp over a plan that would involve the media company being paid to “de-index” its news websites from Google, setting the scene for a search engine battle that could offer a ray of light to the newspaper industry.

OK, so let’s say this deal comes together–which I really doubt–but let’s say it does. What will happen? I, and many others, will know that in order to read an article on the Wall Street Journal, we have to go to Bing.com and not Google. We conduct our search, read the article, then decide to keep Bing as our default search engine…go right back to using Google!

While Bing does need to get some exclusives like this, I just don’t see them being enough to fully switch the masses away from Google. If I know that my favorite bread is only available at Trader Joe’s, I’ll occasionally buy my bread there. The rest of the grocery shopping will be done at Harris Teeter…technically by my wife, but you get the idea.

What do you think? Will deals like this convince you to switch to Bing? Forget you–you’re smart–will it convince the average search user to switch?

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Search Engine Land talks to Marissa Mayer about Google testing a new search interface among a select few users. The new interface uses a left-hand pane to display search options—but instead of being off by default, with a link to turn on the pane, the new search options will be on permanently, and Google will lose the top blue bar over its results.

Other options, including results from other Google properties (Images, News, Maps, Books) will join the left-hand panel. Search Engine Land has screenshots of the news options test:

Meanwhile, as a refresher, here’s the present Search Options (first tested a year ago, added to the SERP in May):

In the new screenshot, sitelinks are also homogenized—rather than appearing inconsistently (at any position, indented or on a single line, or possibly not at all), they appear in this test on the first two results as a single line.

So the new layout is pretty cool—it standardizes many things that weren’t, it puts many popular options all together, and it predicts what category of results you want (images, video, etc., though that may or not work out for you). But is it just me (no, because Matt McGee said this, too) or does this look a little familiar?

Mayer suggests that not only is a three-column layout becoming a default in search engine results pages, but it’s also a “universal truth.” (Kind of like using the magical 28 words on the home page?)

In other news: Mayer says the fading homepage has slowed users down.

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Facebook is updating its Privacy Policy. They did it the Facebook way, which is great PR. The company looks like it is taking care of business because it can say things like on their blog like

On Nov. 5, we wrapped up a week-long notice and comment period for a proposed revision to our privacy policy. This was a continuation of our ongoing effort to run Facebook in an open and transparent way. The goals of the revised policy were to make it more accessible and easier to understand.

Excellent buzzwords in there like open and transparent. In reality maybe they are trying to do that but how hard are they trying and in the end, does it even matter?

I ask this because although I use Facebook a fair amount (I check it every day but don’t get involved everyday) and I honestly was unaware that a review and comment period was even happening. Maybe I wasn’t paying attention (not the first time) but apparently I am not alone among the 300 million Facebook users.

Facebook’s blog continues

We’ve spent the last week reviewing each and every one of your comments. While a lot of people participated, the total number of people commenting did not reach the threshold of 7,000 that makes a vote necessary according to our Statement of Rights and Responsibilities. Because of this — and the fact that many of the comments were positive — we’ve decided to adopt the revised policy. We’ll be posting it in English, French, Italian, German and Spanish soon.

You remember the 7,000 Rule from earlier this year? Based on how Facebook defines ‘a lot of participation’ probably not. Go to the post announcing the review period and you will see about 1500 people ‘liked’ this which is not a comment and there were just 450 plus comments. Add in the approximately 1,400 comments on the various language announcements on the Site Governance Page and you get about 2,000 comments in total. Regardless of how Facebook positions it that is not ‘a lot of participation’. There are over 477,000 fans on the Governance Page alone and these are the people that supposedly even give a rip (I did join today, btw).

So what’s it all mean? It means that we are users and not participants in this community. People who read this blog are potential social media influencers and should probably get involved in shaping how this thing works. At least that seems to make sense. Until we vote though, there is little we can do or say because the 7,000 Rule is some great CYA for Facebook. So my question is do you even care what Facebook does with its policies? Also, if you feel wronged in the future by a policy and you haven’t done anything in the past to help shape it should anyone listen to any whining or complaining? Do you even have the right to complain? Just some food for thought.

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Speaking at a Nesta panel this morning in London, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone stated that long-rumored premium corporate accounts for the most popular microblogging service will come by year’s end.

Although business accounts have long been a source of speculation for the site’s monetization plans, it’s not true that all business accounts will be charged for using the service. Instead, the premium accounts will feature additional analytics data and enhanced features.

Back in August, they said they were in the first phases of rolling out these accounts.

Also on the panel, celebritwit Stephen Fry criticized the move. According to Clickz:

He . . . said he didn’t intend to be “anti-commercial,” but that if Twitter becomes “annoying to users” and there was “a sense of being guided by a big corporate brother,” the company risks alienating its user base.

Which, of course, is a good point. Fry also asked about the possibility of display ads (specifically annoying banners), which Stone dismissed: “the plan has always been to create a [revenue] model that would be native to Twitter.”

What do you think? Are you interested in a premium account? Do you think Twitter will ever cave on display ads?

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Google announced that closed captioning is coming to YouTube. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we know it was already there in many videos where the creators took the time to add the subtitles for the hearing- or speaker-impaired. But now, for selected participating partners (mainly universities), YouTube itself will be adding the captions.

The captions will be machine generated and automatically timed to match the video (and still be readable, I hope). Just like any dictation program, I suppose, they’ll listen to the audio from the clips and transcribe it. Now, normally, you know I’d be in there making fun of all the hilarious errors a machine makes when transcribing the participating partners’ clips (because, hey, even humans don’t always do a good job of captioning)—but as I write this, they’re actually not doing it yet. Sigh.

Google rightly points out that this will enhance search within YouTube. Previously, only the accompanying text of a video would be searchable; now the actual content of the video would be indexable as well.

Google has actually been indexing the content of selected videos’ audio for over a year through its GAudi project. However, even after the elections of last year, they continue to focus on political news only in that project.

Also, the new automatic caption timing feature will make it easier to manually caption videos, for nonparticipating partners. You know, the rest of us.

What do you think? Are you excited for captions on videos from partners like Duke (IN YOUR FACE, FRANK AND ANDY—welcome to basketball season!)?

via

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