What impact will these little “plus signs” have on your advertising strategy?

Google’s Marissa Mayer, VP of search products and user experience, informed the NY Times last month about Google’s latest SERP feature and testing began the same day. Andy Beal (MarketingPilgrim.com ) and others at SERoundtable were among the first to spot the new video ads today.

The NY Times article also quoted Mayer as saying that…

…text ads are not as effective on pages with search results that include images and video. The eyes of users automatically gravitate to the images more than the text, she said. Now that Google’s main search results pages include more images, video links and other elements, it is more appropriate, she argued, to have corresponding advertising formats.

Rather than “appropriate”, Andy Beal described Google’s latest move of implementing video ads into search results as “Google Getting Greedy…There’s really no other way to dress this up.” Beal suggested that Google’s implementation strategy of “taking a delicate approach” is indeed mandatory.

…walking the fine line between “monetizing its success” and “getting too greedy and alienating its users.” It’s a very fine line - one that the likes of Alta Vista and Excite over-stepped and ended up withering in the shadow of a search engine that had a clean interface.

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Early signs of new things to come from Google. Videos showing up in the search results have a way yet to evolve, but now that it has started, it should be interesting to see how things progress and how far they take it.
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Image - News.com

In the seemingly waning days of the U.S. government’s antitrust review of the Google-DoubleClick union, consumer groups are lodging a last-minute plea: don’t forget about privacy.
That was the message during a conference call with reporters Tuesday morning hosted by the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Center for Digital Democracy. read more

Google’s latest videos released that cover some very specific privacy issues on a product-by-product basis. They join some other video content to help grow the Google Privacy Channel on YouTube that was created last month. read more

Viewed by some as a meticulously constructed image campaign waged by Google to overcome lingering user privacy concerns, it’s probably no coincidence that the Don’t Worry Be Happy messages propagate resolutely as the FTC winds up it’s antitrust review of the controversial $3.1 Billion megamerger of Google and Doubleclick.

There’s been a rash of mainstream media articles this week about Web 2.0 and Social Networks.  Maybe it’s partly because several mainstream media companies have growing vested interests in large popular Social Networks.  Maybe it also because Facebook teamed up with ABC news this week to create “US Politics”, a Facebook application highlighting the 2008 Presidential race. Maybe it’s just because of the herd mentality that mainstream media is often accused of displaying.

This CNNMoney article focuses on the opinion of Jim Nail, the chief strategy and marketing officer of Cymfony, an online advertising analytics firm. It can summed up as this: “There are too many companies. So from that standpoint, there is a venture capital bubble in this area. There will have to be more consolidation,”

But what’s probably more substantive that the article itself, is the number and intensity of insightful responses to the article that provide better perspective on the key element that sustains virtually all social networks: advertising revenue.  One such post signed by KickApps.com (a social media applications creator) CEO, Alex Blum, tell us that:

The ad revenue opportunity in social media is based on audience engagement (which is clearly there) but also relevance.  This is where the general social networks fall short.  For the most part they lack context in the same way a large shopping mall does when compared to a boutique store. The high value opportunity is around quality of audience, engagement and ultimately, brand affinity for marketers. So called niche communities offer this in ways that general communities don’t, but it’s important not to think of this as an either or proposition. Most people want both malls and boutiques in the lives.

With this opportunity, marketers need to think in terms of a marketing model that leverages context, relevance and participation. Three basics:

1) Targeted, relevant advertising. People accept unobtrusive messages that are relevant to their interest within the community but advertisers can’t assume that the same rules for advertising apply in a participatory environment. It’s a different environment and people are engaging in different ways. More importantly, there are tremendous opportunities to understand not only what people are topically interested in but also how they interact. The context is there and the data mining tools are available. This should all inform the message and delivery.

2) Branded programming. From a branding point of view, facilitating an activity on the social web can do as much if not more for a brand than banner ad. Check out what VIBE Magazine did with MySpace on www.vibeverses.com. MySpace reaps the benefits of partnering with a strong niche brand, VIBE benefits from the audience that MySpace aggregates, and advertisers wanting to reach urban teens and young adults have a platform to engage them through prizes, contests, etc. There are opportunities for both brand affinity and calls to action. [Disclaimer: VIBE is using KickApps to power the VIBE Verses contest.]

3) Commerce. People are engaged and are more inclined to buy. Think of being in a conversation about a sports team. You get all psyched about it and the team releases a special edition jersey. People engaged in that conversation are likely to make that purchase. Right place, right time, right product.

It’s not necessarily a quantity game anymore, rather, it’s quality. With quality comes a premium. That’s what will drive valuations.

Alex Blum

CEO, KickApps

Something approaching the value of a MBA in Social Media Advertising might well be contained in the above response…yet Mr. Blum gave it away for free.  What a concept!

read more | digg story

Traditional advertising players risk major revenue declines as budgets shift rapidly to new, interactive formats, which are expected to grow at nearly five times that of traditional advertising.

read more | digg story

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