The World Association of Newspapers (WAN) asks the question — and offers a potentially fiery debate — at its upcoming World Newspaper Congress in Hyderabad India (December 1-3).

Should we, asks WAN:

Applaud our gains in web site traffic? Develop closer partnerships with Google and their competitors? Launch our own search engines and collective news portals? Lobby to change or enforce copyright laws online? Sue – or encourage anti-trust cases? What DO we do about Google?

The Great Debate at the 62nd World Newspaper Congress will examine these and other such questions as news publishers world-wide examine and discuss their options and strategies for getting a bigger slice of the internet advertising revenues which are today being massively reaped by Google.

FOR GOOGLE:

David Drummond, Senior Vice President and Chief Legal Council of Google, will be on stage to give the search giant’s perspectives.

Mr Drummond leads Google’s global teams for legal, government relations, corporate development and new business development, including strategic partnerships. Before joining Google in 2002, he served as its first outside counsel and worked with Larry Page and Sergey Brin to incorporate the company and secure its initial round of financing.

FOR THE NEWSPAPERS:

Gavin O’Reilly, CEO of Independent News & Media and President of the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA), will debate on behalf of the newspaper iindustry.

Gavin O’Reilly was probably the first major news industry personality to publicly criticise Google, when he called them `kleptomaniacs’ in a 2006 speech where he said they were “increasingly aiming their strategic efforts at traditional content originators and aggregators like newspaper publishers. The irony is that these search engines exist, largely, because of the traditional news and content aggregators and profit at their expense’’.

ON THE SIDELINE, HECKLING:

Since then, others have joined in the chorus of opposition, most notably Rupert Murdoch, who said last month: “The aggregators and plagiarists will soon have to pay a price for the co-opting of our content. If we do not take advantage of the current movement toward paid content, it will be the content creators Š who will pay the ultimate price and the content kleptomaniacs who triumph.’’ Mr Murdoch just this week threatened to block Google News from taking any content from News Corp web sites.

AND THEN THERE’S US:

Marketers everywhere would love to see a Win-Win resolution. None of us will benefit if newspapers fall over. But we’ll also be the poorer if the internet devolves into a collection of islands hidden behind paywalls.

There are no easy answers. But we look forward to the Debate and its outcome.

Tweet This Post

Tags: Google, Great Debate, newspapers

Every year at the Web 2.0 Summit, Morgan Stanley Internet analyst Mary Meeker gives her view of the world, the Web, and the technology industry by quickly going through about 50 slides that illustrate the major trends she is tracking.

Late last month, Ms Meeker delivered her annual presentation as usual. What has she picked as hot for 2010?

Mobile Internet.

Mary’s mobile internet take away, via Mobiz:

1. Mobile internet is bigger than you think.
2. iPhone is becoming THE mobile platform.
3. Social media, mobile devices are changing communications and commerce.
4. Mobile internet trends in Japan show how the future will be.
5. Carriers will be crushed by demand.
6. The Walled Gardens collapse.
7. Apple wins, Google [Android] maybe wins, Research In Motion withers

Mary Meeker’s Internet Presentation 2009

Why are we telling you this now?

To explain why we’ve just launched a mobile version of this site. Access us via your mobile and you’ll automatically be served a mobile-friendlier version.

It may not get much use now, but oh boy, wait till next year.

PS Full credit to MobilePress for the plugin that made our move to mobile a breeze!

Tweet This Post

Tags: Google, internet trends, iPhone, mary meeker, mobile devices, mobile internet, mobile version, morgan stanley, research in motion

Being only slightly tech-obsessed (though our wives might agree to differ), we haven’t paid too much attention so far to Google’s Android mobile phone offering. To be honest, we hadn’t even felt compelled to invest in the ubiquitous iPhone. Our excuse: a stated preference for style over substance. Actually, we probably weren’t cool enough.

Anyway now, courtesy AdMob, we’ve come across some fascinating/frightening statistics that suggest:

1. Android is becoming a serious contender
2. Smartphones are taking off faster than earlier data had led us to believe
3. Mobile apps are ‘the next big thing’ on the very small screen

First, take a look at this chart, comparing mobile data usage worldwide for the various operating systems.

Clearly Android has a long way to go to pick off Apple — but look at the tripling in Android’s worldwide operating system usage in just six months.

Secondly, some mobile application download numbers from a month earlier:

AdMob surveyed over 1,000 iPhone, iPod touch and Android users to find out more about their interaction and download behavior with apps.  Some highlights:

• Android and iPhone users download approximately 10 new apps a month, while iPod touch owners download an average of 18 per month
• More than 90 percent of Android and iPhone OS users browse and search for apps directly on their mobile device instead of their computer
• Upgrading from the lite version was the top reason given when users were asked what drives them to purchase a paid app
• iPhone and iPod touch users are twice as likely to purchase paid apps than Android users.
• Users who regularly download paid apps spend approximately $9 on an average of five paid downloads per month

In a separate post at BrandRepublic, AdMob’s Russell Buckley notes that:

We serve about 10 billion ads every month to mobile web publishers and app developers globally. This means that we can’t measure market share, but we can track handsets that are used more than they should be, to view mobile web pages and download and use apps.  We noticed very early on that iPhone was getting a disproportionate amount of share when measured like this and history is being repeated with Android.

What’s also great for mobile advertisers is that Android and iPhone both offer much more creative advertising formats and that their ease of use generally mean more interaction and higher click-through-rates. Consumers are engaging with marketers via the mobile channel in very large numbers and that trend is going to speed up with more Android handsets in the market.

Even allowing for the fact that Russell is in the mobile marketing business, the enthusiasm is contagious.

Which leads us to ask the question: how prepared are you for mobile marketing? [Forecaster/analyst Mary Meeker of Morgan Stanley has already outed the Mobile Internet as one of The Big Trends of the next twelve months!]

Tweet This Post

Tags: admob, Google, iPhone, mobile apps, mobile data, mobile device, mobile web, operating system, smartphones

There’s been a lot of talk in recent years about The Local Web — and the theoretical opportunity to make money out of online advertising servicing the needs of local businesses. Of course, there is the minor problem that there isn’t necessarily enough potential revenue to support the cost of selling and servicing localised online advertising, except in the largest towns and cities …

Enter Google with its newest offering, Local Listing Ads, currently on beta-test in San Francisco and San Diego. It’s a really significant marketing development, especially for small businesses and local retailers.

What’s Unique About “Local Listing Ads”?

1. They’re flat rate, unlike most other Google ad offerings. Greg Sterling of Search Engine Land reports that “The ads are priced on a flat-fee basis (but prices vary by market and category). Google would not disclose the range, but I believe they begin at $20 per month and may go up to $200 or more dollars. But they’re experimenting with pricing. The first month is free”.
   This is a massive departure from Google — a whole new online marketing idea that removes the largest barrier for small business! The “science” required to master Google AdWords has been a game-killer for many entrepreneurs and business owners. In the real world — especially in tough economic times — who has the luxury of spending hours trawling through keywords and trying to make sense of the AdWords processes?
2. Pricing Courtesy You. PPC Blog picks up on an AdAge report that the Local Listing Ads fee is “set by Google and based on the average that similar businesses are paying for a given keyword in that market”. In other words, notes PPC, “Google is using your keywords and your bid prices to automate setting up accounts for competing businesses”.
3. They’re Self-Service. No need to invest in a hyperlocal sales force. The customer does all the work. But, actually, not much effort is required. Can you cope with typing up your name, address and credit card details?
4. No creative required. The Local Listing Ads will not carry any creative, just business name and contact details — and a web address. No need to worry about all that tiresome testing stuff.
5. Heck, no website required either. The URL in the ad can be directed to Google Place Pages. A Place Page is a webpage for every place in the world, organizing all the relevant information about it. By every place, Google really mean *every* place — there are Place Pages for businesses, points of interest, transit stations, neighborhoods, landmarks and cities all over the world.
6. The traffic numbers look really, really good. Over 80% of people already look to Google for local information, according to the search giant’s stats. It’s a compelling story for local businesses (and a substantial competitive advantage over other local online advertising resources).
7. They’re a whole new revenue stream for Google. These are new ad units that will appear both on Google.com in local results and in Google Maps. They’ll be in addition to, not in place of, AdWords. Check out the examples below.

As noted, Local Listing Ads are currently only available in San Diego and San Francisco. But expect them to roll out everywhere, sooner rather than later. If you’re a small business operator, this is a must-have addition to your marketing arsenal!

We cover Local Listing Ads (the implications, the opportunities and the competitive threat) in detail in the upcoming (November) issue of Marketing Rag — check out the story Google: Yellow Peril? [If you're not already receiving Michael Carney's Marketing Rag, subscribe here].

Tweet This Post

Tags: Google, Local Listing Ads

You know about Google’s power in Search advertising, but how about in content — all those hundreds of thousands of independent websites that add Google ads to their pages in the hopes of earning a penny or two from their musings?

Turns out that the Google Content Network is actually “the world’s #1 ad network”, reaching more than 80% of global internet users. Six billion ad impressions are served each day across hundreds of thousands of content network websites (according to comScore Key Measures, October 2008). Thousands of AdWords advertisers place ads on the Content Network to complement their search marketing campaigns on Google.com and the rest of the Google search network.

How do Content Network ads perform for advertisers?
Google recently analyzed conversions, cost, and cost-per-acquisition (CPA) on the Content Network, and compared them to performance metrics on the search network across thousands of campaigns and many geographic regions.

Google have now published a white paper presenting the findings from this analysis. Perhaps surprisingly, it shows that advertisers who advertise on the content network see good results on a number of levels:

• Ads on the Google Content Network are likely to be as cost-effective – or even more cost-effective – than ads on the search network.
• The median advertiser has a content CPA that’s about 2% lower than their search CPA.
• The Content Network drives a significant share of total conversions.
• The Content Network drives nearly 20% of total conversions for the median advertiser.
• Conversion rates are higher for advertisers who used either of two AdWords campaign management controls: the Conversion Optimizer and site exclusion.

Content websites, from our perspective, have one significant advantage over search pages: consumers are not merely “passing through” the content website in a quest for some final destination, as they are in search. They’re more likely to linger, more likely to be interested in the primary topic of the website and thus potentially more interested in your marketing message as long as it’s directly related to the website topic (hence the importance of “site exclusion”, to ensure your communications are correctly targeted).

You’ll find the Google white paper here.

Tweet This Post

Tags: Google