Yahoo Introduces Product Ads for Search and Display with Major Retailers

The once dominant search engine is seeking new ways to generate advertising revenue with an intriguing, and potentially highly engaging ad format - image-based product ads, which already exist on Google and Bing. With Product Ads, advertisers have the ability to reach across the web with rich images of the products. A handful of retailers are already trying out this format on Yahoo, and early advertisers on Yahoo's Product Ads have seen 20% higher conversion rates and more than 30% lower cost per acquisition, optimizing for both impact and cost. One retailer with Product Ads on Yahoo has already been seeing as high as a 14-to-1 return on ad spend. Frankly, it is surprising that Yahoo created this advertising format so late, as Google has experienced much success with product ads, which accounted for 60% of all Google's non-brand traffic in Q3.

The most trusted name in news is... Google?

This week the public relations firm Edelman released a report showing that online search is now a more trusted source of news and information than traditional news media. Interestingly, but perhaps not surprisingly, this effect was even more pronounced among millenials.

At this point, you are probably a little confused. Google isn't a news outlet. It does not generate content or track down leads. How can Google be a more trusted news source than an actual news site? What's going on here?

Well, here is how I have been thinking about this.  As more news media moves online, users are more comfortable consuming their news and information entirely from the internet, but as with most things on the internet, we want choice! (After all, have you ever searched for a relatively specific search term, but still felt annoyed or let down when the search engine only returns one or two relevant hits?) Users are no longer limited to the magazines to which they can afford to subscribe or to their local news stations. More sources, more details, and more viewpoints are becoming better. As Quartz explains: "Getting an at-a-glance look at a wide range of stories deemed relevant by a search-engine algorithm—be they from traditional news outlets, blogs, advertisements, and much else besides—is more comforting to the curious reader, it seems, than simply pulling up a single news outlet’s site." And given the inherent biases of so many news outlets these days, perhaps this approach is actually more balanced overall... but that is a discussion for another blog.

So what does this mean for digital marketing and for search engines? Well, on the one hand, this trust gives search a level of credibility and power with consumers, making paid search and search engine optimization even more valuable as marketing tools. Users clearly trust the algorithms to effectively curate their worldview, so imagine how much more likely they are to select an ad or a site that was picked for them and presented as highly and specifically relevant. On the other hand, this revelation should serve as a warning to companies like Google not to overdo it or to lose sight of their core competency. If advertising is not judiciously vetted and well matched to users or if search results become too easily manipulated by crack marketing teams, search engines could lose that valuable trust as quickly as they earned it.

Consumers trust Google's news algorithm more than traditional media organizations
Google is now a more trusted source of news than the websites it aggregates

Bing Goes To China

It seems Microsoft's Bing is teaming up with Baidu, China's largest search engine. Baidu is largely a Chinese language search engine and Bing will help them improve their English based searches. This comes after Google pulled out of China over concerns of censorship. The article says that the new Bing searches will be also censored and this made me think of the display ads and marketing. It's probably going to be even harder to introduce customized advertising content when you have to be careful of who you are targeting and what material you are providing them with.

The full article is available here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/05/technology/05microsoft.html?_r=1&ref=technology

Bing's issue is more than technology.

Two weeks ago, Professor Kagan opens the lecture by reporting on the current news events of the week. He spoke briefly about Google's Wave, a new online communication and collaboration tool, and Microsoft's Bing, an improved search engine. Last week, I decided to explore both applications. I watched the Wave preview video for only 20 minutes, and used the Bing search engine searched occasionally throughout the week. My first impression of Wave's integrated instant messaging and e-mail platforms was very positive, and continued view Google as an innovative company. However, the Bing user interface is impressive, but I had no "Wow!" effect. In the short run, I will use Bing occasionally, but I will most likely remain with Google as my default search engine. I introduced Bing to a co-worker, but he did not seem too excited about the search engine. Bing has two big issues: Google's reputation as the leader in the internet industry, and Microsoft image as a Windows company that stifles innovation. Microsoft evolved from an era where the company controlled technology and dominated its sector. On the contrary, Google evolved in the era of the World Wide Web where open source software and free software are the norm. Microsoft's reputation as a controlling company may have, also, hurt its brand and the recent product launch of Bing. Making matters worst, in the article by Ben Parr (http://mashable.com/2009/06/07/blindsearch/) that compared the results of Google's search engine with Bing's was not positive for Microsoft. The blind test shows that users perceive that Google's search results are more accurate and relevant than Bing's and Yahoo's. Google with be force that Microsoft will have to reckon with in the future. Although Microsoft has financial and intellectual resources to sustain the company as player in the internet era, Microsoft my have to play from the back seat until it changes its mindset and image.

Fear Grips Google?.. Really?..

Is Google really scared of anything other than the term 'anti-trust'? :)

According to James Doran in the New York Post on June 14th, "co-founder Sergey Brin is so rattled by the launch of Microsoft's rival search engine that he has assembled a team of top engineers to work on urgent upgrades to his Web service."

So why does Bing have Google scared?

• Apparently there is something about the search algorithm in Bing that has Brin concerned - and the fact that one of Google's co-founders is so hands-on regarding this particular competitor has industry insiders taking notice.
• Google and Yahoo! dominate the search market, with 60 and 20% market shares respectively, and Microsoft has been largely unsuccessful in competing - but Bing has been received favorably by critics, was launched with a gigantic marketing budget ($80-100M according to the Post), and early statistics show Bing increasing Microsoft's market share by two percentage points, to about 11 percent.
  

But 'Fear Grips Google' seems to be a bit of an overstatement by the Post at the moment, as Scott Kessler, senior analyst at Standard & Poor's and a Google specialist, notes the main motivations for consumers' choice in search is ease of use and habit - making Google harder to scare than an $80M marketing budget and favorable reviews.

While I've tried out Bing and find it to be quite user-friendly, the force of habit motivation that Kessler mentions is a difficult hurdle to overcome. It will be interesting to see how Microsoft proceeds in gaining market share once this initial marketing push phase is complete. Can they stay in the game, after setting the pace at $80-100M, to overcome this Google habit of ours?

Read 'Fear Grips Google' in the NY Post here:
http://www.nypost.com/seven/06142009/business/fear_grips_google_174235.htm