Google's New Ad Offerings - Sucess pending

Kevin J. Delaney brings us an atricle in Thursday's Wall Street Journal (from here on out, this will blog will call it "The Journal"), entitled "Google Tests New Ad Offerings —but Will Advertisers Follow?

Google has been discussing trying to shift some of its dependency on online advertising for revenue. Sure they want to bring us all the informaiton in the world, and yeah they are good at "Don't be evil." But, at its core, Google is an adversiting company, so why not aim for selling ads through traditional channels such as TV, radio and print? In fact, why not set up a system where advertisers can let Google take care of all their advertising needs? This is precisely Google's thinking.

With it's developing strategies Google doesn't just want advertisers to buy ads. They want to sell marketing services. As Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt says, "The long-term fantasy is we walk up to you and you give us, say, $10 million and we'll completely allocate it for you." But don't worry Google won't just divy out you advertising money across different media and ad types. They also plan to bring extensive reporting on the success of different types of ads. In other words, Google will help you track your advertising revenue and get the most bang for your buck.

Sounds pretty competetive, eh? Well, the big marketing firms may not need to worry just yet, as Google admits these ideas are still being conceptualized and developed. Ideally, all these features would be avaialable through a single, easy to use and maintain, online interface. But, some speculate Google may struggle to attract big advertisers....I don't think so. The reason Google's core advertisers are small and medium sized businesses is because Google does'nt yet offer ads through traditional channels. I think these new strides will really take off, pending Google can provide the personell infrastructure to sustain such a system. Most big advertisers are used to getting some face-to-face time with their marketing firm, and I think Google will have to provide that to be successful.

This article caught my interest, not just because I am an avid Google user (and a shareholder), but also because I have seen this plan going into action and succeeding. During a certain high-profile college football game, I saw a zesty new pontiac ad, pushing one of their new compact SUVs. At the end of the commercial, did they pitch pontiac.com?? NO! The TV man said "Google pontiac for more information!", as the screen showed the Google home page with a mouse clicking the "I'm feeling lucky" button with pontiac typed into the text field. What an ingenius way to get hits on a website. I say go Google!

Peace!

iPod Fighting the Good Fight! But...Let the Zune Loom

Years after the demise of the original Napster and openly available "free but legal" MP3 downloads music lovers and tech-geeks alike (and hell, just about everyone else too) still gripe about the up-and-coming evil that is DRM (Digital Rights Management). I've even seen Slashdotters complain about the Apple's DRM on iTunes downloads....

But, I bet they never imagined the iPod (and its immense popularity) may begin to contribute to the continued availablility of DRM-free music files...

Ethan Smith and Nick Wingfield wrote an article in this Wednesday's Wall Street journal entitled "In a Turnabout Record Industry Releases MP3s". Here they site several examples of big record companies (such as EMI and even Song BMG) giving up some ground when it comes to providing DRM-free digital music files. The article sited 5 artists on major labels that are now offering DRM-free MP3 files via YahooMusic. It is currently the convention of many labels to only sell digital music files that are restricted by Antipiracy software of some kind.

Why the turn around? Because most antipiracy measures prevent the most popular MP3 player in the world (the iPod, of course) from playing those files. While Apple has been widely criticized for not opening up the iPod to other file/DRM formats, it has remained steadfast in maintianing it's proprietary technologies for the iPod.

So what are we seeing here? More open MP3s being made avaialable because people are targeting the iPod nation? Whoda thunk? Personally, I think this was bound to start happening...the record companies have to break and this is only the begininning. Simply put DRM-laden digital media (pix and vids included) is simply tubby. It's a pain to worry about how many plays you have left on a file, or whether or not the file can do to a CD or an MP3 player. No one wants limitation on their personal digital media collections. And while digital song sales have risen to almost 150 million quarterly in the US, pirated files still make up an estimated 90% of total digital song files downloaded. People are willing to pay for music...that's not the issue here. What people don't want is for most of their money to go to big music labels and get restricted access to the products they purchase.

I think we're starting to see a positive turn-around in the digital music revolution. And while, not everything about the iPods dominance is positive, there is definately some good coming from it. Hats off to YahooMusic exec David Goldberg for widdling down the record companies.

"Black Friday eCommerce Up" ...to Cyber Monday

On Cyber Monday (aka the Monday after Black Friday) Roger Park of iMedia Connection wrote an interesting article regarding the rise in online shopping this holiday season. The article can be found here:
http://www.imediaconnection.com/news/12583.asp

I am quite impressed how much online purchasing has gone up in recent years, and this year is the one of the biggest yet.

"Online retail spending reached $8.31 billion during the first 24 days of November this year, marking a 23 percent increase versus the corresponding days in 2005."

"Black Friday saw online sales with $434 million spent, up 42 percent from last year" ....that's ONE DAY ya'll!

Here is the breakdown of the top visited shopping sites on Black Friday:
(# of unique visitors)
eBay - 7.5 million
Amazon.com - 3.4 million
Walmart.com - 3.2 million

What is truly impressive to me about these numbers is that the majority of online shoppers seem to be using sites that do not have traditional retail outlets. People are putting more of their trust into online shopping....even on eBay! This leads me to beleive that maybe online shopping is becoming more convenient and probably even safer. Think about it though...major sites consistently offer discounted prices AND discounted shipping making online shopping cheaper. Product descriptions and users reviews are becoming abundant and more complex. The wallet of the average American seems to be saying that the overall offers presented by online retailers are good enough...or maybe even better than going to the store. I'd rather deal with internet traffic than city traffic ANYday!

The way Americans shop is changing in a big way. This is probably the only thing that has sustained the shipping industry through recent downtimes in the economy. While the change is great for the USPS and FedEx, however, it presents new challenges to all retailers across the board. Websites aren't just for getting information to customers anymore...they're for obtaining customers.

As an up-and-coming computer scientist, this news makes me quite happy...not necessarily because I prefer to shop online (although I usually do), rather because it creates massive competition between online retailers forcing them all to improve to keep up...and lets face it online retailing still has a loooong way to go, particularly when it comes to user interface design....oh but that's a whole 'nother rant....

Cheers!

Welcome!

Hi All!
My name is Matt Downs. I am a 4th year Computer Science major at Ohio Northern University. I will be posting my take on current news articles related to e-Commerce. Feel free to give me a shout...Enjoy!