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GMS Local Research Finds Disconnect in Brands’ Perception vs. Execution of Digital Local Marketing Efforts

by ~ January 31st, 2012

New research announced today from GMS Local, exploring the realities of the local digital advertising marketplace, is a wake-up call for national advertisers with brick & mortar locations. The study from GMS Local, a comprehensive digital local marketing service of GroupM, reveals the disparity in the perception national brands have in regards to their involvement in the local online marketing space, and the actual effort in which their brand are putting forth. Conducted between September and November 2011, the comparative study was created to gain a deeper understanding of the barriers brands face within the digital marketplace and to explore how engaged national brands are with local marketing.

Marketing executives and managers of national brands, with a minimum of 500 brick and mortar locations, were surveyed and provided with the local digital marketing averages and best practices from national data in order to access their reactions and to have them create comparative “self-assessments” against the national averages. According to the study, one of three national brands has yet to invest in the basic local digital effort of online business directory listings, and thirty-two percent of these marketers attribute their insufficient engagement to a lack of awareness.

“The research shows a clear disconnect between what brands believe they are doing with those investments and what is actually being done. We speak to advertisers daily that have enormous blind spots in local digital coverage, and who welcome the education and strategy needed to resolve their willingness to spend and target which is hindered by the inability to determine what to do first and next,” said Chris Copeland, CEO, GroupM Search.

According to Borrell Associates, local digital advertising is expected to grow 18 percent in 2012, with local online spend projected to surpass all other channels by 2015. This growth, compared with the gap in what marketing executives perceive their brands are doing at the local level and the reality of their execution, shows national advertisers are missing the opportunity for sizeable gains.

As detailed in GMS Local’s whitepaper,“Perception vs. Execution: Examination of Brands’ Local Business Strategies Reveals Gaps to Act On,” national advertisers can overcome these challenges with deeper education around opportunity in the local digital space and self-assessment of the reality of their allocation and programs. Also helpful within the document is  a blueprint to help brands assess their local digital strategy and the three key areas for immediate action.

To chat more about local digital advertising, keep in touch with the team from GMS Local on Twitter at @GMSLocal

 

 

Filed under: Emerging Trends & Tech, Local | No Comments >>

Google Changes Search Landscape With Introduction of Search, Plus Your World

by ~ January 20th, 2012

On Tuesday, Jan. 10, 2012, Google made its most radical and forward step into true Social Search with the launch of Search, plus Your World. Your World, as described in the official Google blog post, changes search results for individual users in three key ways:

  1. Personal Results, which enable you to find information just for you, such as Google+ photos and posts—both your own and those shared specifically with you, that only you will be able to see on your results page; 
  2. Profiles in Search, both in autocomplete and results, which enable you to immediately find people you’re close to or might be interested in following; and, 
  3. People and Pages, which help you find people profiles and Google+ pages related to a specific topic or area of interest, and enable you to follow them with just a few clicks. Because behind most every query is a community. 

The changes show a continued and clear commitment to the Google+ social network as noted by Stephen Hall, Sr. Partner, Director, Global Search for Catalyst online, a GroupM company. “This is a move to help push adoption of G+ on brands.  Growing your community/circles from a brand perspective, as well as increased sharing, should dramatically increase brand usage, given the vast potential increases in traffic from improved rankings.  This gets interesting for many brands as it forces them into the ‘content creator’ category. So for those that are not historically creating content, there is going to need to be a shift in the way that they are marketing their products and services.”

While many expected Google to move in this direction, there was clear unrest in some corners of the worldwide web over this move to a definition of a consumers’ world that is from Google and by Google. Twitter’s general counsel Alex Macgilivray, tweeted, in part, “Bad day for the Internet” and later the company, which once had a relationship with Google, expanded to say “For years, people have relied on Google to deliver the most relevant results anytime they wanted to find something on the Internet. We’re concerned that as a result of Google’s changes, finding this information will be much harder for everyone,” Twitter continued. “We think that’s bad for people, publishers, news organizations and Twitter users.”

Google’s response put all responsibility for any wider reach from Google back on the rest of the companies dedicated to cultivating the social graph. As reported in AdWeek and Search Engine Land, Google Fellow Amit Singhal said, “Facebook and Twitter and other services, basically, their terms of service don’t allow us to crawl them deeply and store things. Google+ is the only [network] that provides such a persistent service. Singhal added that “if others were willing to change, we’d look at designing things to see how it would work.”

For now, Google will begin rolling out these new features to all users and brands are likely to have little choice but to further engage with Google+ and the continued content creation required to distinguish. Dan Cristo, Director of SEO Innovation for Catalyst, advised, “One major thing I would expect brands to look out for is increased competition in the organic space. Previously, your organic search competitors were primarily websites. This is changing to now include anyone in a searchers social graph. Not only will preferences of ‘friends’ emerge in results as an answer to a question before a brand, those friends will be prompted to respond in real-time in this new world. Brands want to be the ones answering consumers’ questions. In order to earn that right, brands need to attain the same intimacy level friends have in the social graph, and act more like a friend as opposed to a brand.”

This article was written by Chris Copeland, CEO, GroupM Search , and was  published on MediaBizBloggers, Jan. 24, 2012.  Follow Chris on Twitter – @SearchBoss.

 

Filed under: Emerging Trends & Tech, Social Media | No Comments >>

Casting the Right Hook Into the Digital Talent Pool

by ~ December 12th, 2011

We’re an industry of fisherman. This advertising industry is one built on ideas, but funded on the hours spent executing off those ideas. In many ways, advertising (especially digital advertising) has become the antithesis of the Chinese proverb, “Give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach a man to fish and he eats forever.” But to teach a man to fish, he must first be receptive to learning.

When I consider what this means for digital advertising talent, it’s clear that before we can become greater than our parts, we must change the current culture. There’s little doubt that the present digital environment is challenged by a shortage of talent based on the demand the marketplace has created. Sitting on the agency side, this is further compromised by the opportunities for financial growth that are constantly presented at virtually every turn, which lead to job hopping and a reticence to invest in talent just to see it walk out the door for greater pay elsewhere. This growth, however, comes with a price.

I recently spent time with an individual who, during our conversation, lamented that he didn’t have the right mentor to help with his career growth. The tragedy of the moment was that the individual, who is immensely talented with great potential, doesn’t lack a mentor. He lacks a manager. Therein lies the real challenge with today’s talent crunch – the lack of individuals qualified to be actual managers of people.

In the digital space, we hire for talent, we develop skills to manage clients and execute strategies, but we rarely hire managers who truly understand how to cultivate and inspire those who work for them. Yes, we have team leaders, but that responsibility set and the rewards we place on them are rarely tied to developing our talent to the degree that they will become the next generation of leaders.

In sports, it’s suggested that a great coach is, above all, a leader of men and women. She is someone who can unify and align people behind a common vision. This person is someone who can motivate people to give more of themselves than what they might have otherwise believed possible. Are we doing the same in our digital environment? Are we hiring people because they can plan and execute a media buy alone? Is that enough? Are we not obligated to them and ourselves to expect more because the returns will have tangible value for us in the work product and business growth that can be delivered over time?

When was the last time you heard someone utter the phrase “They taught me everything I know” and it meant more than how to buy something? Digital advertising has the benefit and curse of being a very, very young industry. Yesterday’s planners are just now starting to evolve into strategists and even bleeding into traditional media roles in select cases. However, for the digital side to truly meet the challenges of tomorrow, we need more managers and stronger leaders who understand and prioritize the value of training and investing in employees. Without these managers and leaders, we’ll continue simply fishing for our supper day in and day out, and will miss the opportunities to teach team members to fish so they’re able to eat forever.

This article was written by Chris Copeland, CEO, GroupM Search – The Americas, and was  published in ClickZ, Monday, Dec 5, 2011.  Follow Chris on Twitter – @SearchBoss.

Filed under: Digital Advertising, Emerging Trends & Tech | No Comments >>

Where Foursquare Went Missing On Black Friday

by ~ December 2nd, 2011

In the Walmart Nation, Check-In Apps Haven’t Caught On, Which Is Bad News for Foursquare and for Retailers

Foursquare is hot. Just ask anyone in New York or San Francisco. But if, one day, it shuffles off to the deadpool of once-hot-but-now-dead startups, I’ll tell you why. It became clear to me at about 10 pm on Thanksgiving night in the Central and Mountain time zones when Walmart , the reigning king of retail, gave no reason, nor incentive, for customers to check-in while waiting online to get inside their stores.

Foursquare is a 10 million-plus network of people looking for deals and earning faux badges that matter only to a small community of likeminded users. It is the bleeding edge of what will someday be a thriving mobile geo-location world that we will all inhabit. But for now, Foursquare is a regional play that masks what it is not – a middle America, mainstream tool.

For weeks I’ve suggested that this past weekend could (or should) be the biggest in Foursquare’s history. After eliminating would-be contenders such as Gowalla, and fending off Facebook, Google and a host of check-in apps, the holiday was theirs for the taking. No technology could better mess with the Black Friday, in-store experience between customers and brands, and the reason for the season (deep, deep discounts).

Yet, it didn’t happen. It didn’t happen in places like St. Louis (where I live) or any number of other cities outside the Top 20 because people either didn’t care or didn’t understand the power of check-ins. Allow me to give you two personal anecdotes that explain what could be the beginning of the end for Foursquare. At 9 p.m. Central on Thanksgiving night, Toys R Us opened its doors to thousands of would-be buyers. At my local store a Foursquare deal was offered to the first five shoppers on a given item, once five people were checked in. It took nearly one hour for five check-ins on the biggest shopping day of the year and for the deal to become available to those individuals. In a store with a capacity of 1,128 people and lines taking nearly two hours, not even two handfuls of people could be bothered to check-in for more of what they craved in the form of better deals.

But Foursquare’s bigger stumble wouldn’t happen for another hour. It finally arrived at 10 p.m. when Walmart opened its doors. Of the first crush of people, less than 50 total customers were checked-in at Walmarts across the St. Louis region. Again we have the kick off to the biggest shopping day paired with the biggest retailer – and nothing. Nothing to see, no deal to be had, move right along, folks.

If Foursquare gets its post-mortem, people will no doubt conclude it died from lack of mainstream adoption, but the truth is it died from lack of education. Lack of education from retailers about the value exchange taking place and a drive to connect. Brands like RadioShack, Macy’s and American Express have tried to educate people, but it has either been too little or too late for middle America. Generally speaking, consumers just have not learned fast enough how to utilize these tools to their benefit.

As Black Friday gives way to Cyber Monday and the rest of this holiday season, there will be more reports about the surge in online sales and the growth of mobile usage. All key trends for a shift in a highly-digital retail world, but it masks the reality of what took place last week. The check-in and geo-location industry aren’t going away, but Foursquare might if it can’t get middle America, and its preferred retailers, to pay attention.

This article was written by Chris Copeland, CEO, GroupM Search – The Americas, and published in AdAge, Thursday, December 1, 2011. Follow Chris on Twitter – @SearchBoss.

Filed under: Emerging Trends & Tech, Local, Social Media | No Comments >>

Deal or No Deal: Is Groupon Now A Sustainable Growth Play?

by ~ December 2nd, 2011

The timing of Groupon’s IPO at the start of November quickly buried news that is worthy of discussion — the disappointing performance of Groupon Now. Groupon’s geo-local play to provide consumers with a “deal on demand.” As reported in Business Insider, Groupon Now generated just $1 million of gross billings in September, despite availability in 25 markets.

That number may come as a surprise until you hear from those who are critical in driving the product’s success — advertisers. In a recent survey conducted by GMS Local of marketing managers of national brands with brick-and-mortar locations, marketers expressed little interest in online deal offers like the real-time deal concept that Groupon’s newest Now product represents.

While Groupon has placed significant bets on the product, only 4% of marketers polled in the study indicated a preference for this approach over other options, including the more common email-based daily deal. Groupon expects big things from Groupon Now, as evidenced by a March BusinessWeek article, stating that CEO Andrew Mason hoped for an incremental $1 billion in revenue from new products in 2011 — namely Groupon Now. The Now approach is designed to connect merchants (such as restaurants) that have extra supply with local consumers.

It is said to have the potential not only to transform lunchtime habits, but also to alter the topography of the multibillion-dollar market for local commerce. “However, according to our research findings that reflect the actual performance of the Now service, there is a striking disconnect between Groupon’s initial projections and reality.

Launching with much fanfare, Groupon Now has seen a gradual decline in growth since this past summer, and represents only 1% of the company’s revenue. These results are much more closely aligned with data reported by marketers that participated in the GMS Local study, but why does such a disparity exist?  

Why are brands not rushing to adopt Groupon Now? The reasons for this may be twofold:

1.) brands tend to make less money on Groupon Now versus traditional daily deals

2.) brands ideal for using the Now product often lack an inventory-tracking technology to truly make their Now play a “real-time” play. Much of Now’s allure is with the restaurant vertical, where empty tables on a Monday afternoon can be shopped similarly to empty hotel rooms on Hotwire. In order to achieve the success hoped for with the launch of Now and other real-time deal offerings, technological innovations from the deal provider or a third-party inventory manager, and corresponding deal specificity are needed. Should national brands consider the Groupon Now offering given its current limitations and lack of adoption? In short, yes, because Now has a key advantage over the traditional email daily deals model. For brands, it offers more targeted and authentic consumer engagement. For consumers, it allows them to drive the interaction and engage in ways that are more relevant and meaningful. But brands must do so with the following two caveats:

Localize, localize and localize your Now deals. Storefronts must be autonomous with their approach to and engagement with Groupon Now. Providing individual stores with control on how they deploy real-time deals will ensure greater relevance to the needs of the local consumer.

Encourage diversity in various markets to see what resonates with local consumers as there isn’t a one-size-fits-all way to success. A diversified approach will help you identify what works and what doesn’t, and allow you the opportunity to tweak your approach to make it work.
Our research and Groupon Now’s performance indicates that the real-time deal space remains in the early stages of adoption with both brands and consumers. Given its ability to ultimately deliver deals that are more relevant to the consumer, the real-time model will gain greater traction in the near term, particularly when technological advances enable more retailers to enter the space. 

In the interim, for brands that want to be ahead of the learning curve, it would benefit them to actively experiment with Groupon Now and like offerings as the market continues to evolve.

This article was writted by GMS Local and published in MediaPost’s Online Media Daily on Thursday, November 17, 2011. Follow GMS Local on Twitter – @GMSLocal

Filed under: Emerging Trends & Tech, Local, Social Media | 1 Comment >>

Black Friday: Social Shopping 1.0

by ~ November 30th, 2011

I love Black Friday.

There, I said it. And I know I’m not alone. By nature, as an anti-social individual who will spear you with a cart while listening to “Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer” on my iPod as I shop, I am clearly in the minority. In fact, short of bridal parties in Vegas, there is likely no bigger celebration of sisterhood than Black Friday. Every year the teams of women wearing matching Black Friday t-shirts and saving spots in line for each other while doing their deal hunting grows; missioning the likes of which tribes have taught their young for centuries.

Black Friday Is the Original Social Shopping Experience

Retailers keep store hours based on consumer demand. Black Friday shoppers use basic survival instincts of herd mentality to secure the best deals, while fostering a sense of togetherness and community for the last decade plus. And now, Cyber Monday and mobile technologies further change the patterns of these shoppers.

This year, Black Friday comes early. Many more retailers including Macy’s and Old Navy have moved their store openings to midnight. Walmart will join the group of retailers that can’t wait and will open on Thursday. The shift to turn Thanksgiving into a commercial holiday (a redundant statement if ever one could be made in this country) has been met with ample backlash. Nearly 200,000 individuals have signed an online protest to pressure retailers into keeping the gluttony at the dinner table and not the checkout lane. And while it is certainly the right of the public to protest, and even boycott, it is probably done without an awareness of what Black Friday is for most people.

This move to more hours is reactive to consumer demand, yet is also preemptive to the challenges of control lost by in-store retail. Retailers are fighting a sluggish economy, new forms of distribution via the Internet, which makes it easier to get products from previously unknown sources, and the realities that in-store retail is growing annually at less than half the rate of online.

Unfortunately, for most retailers, the shift in store hours is not enough. Today’s digital-savvy shopper is aware that discounts can be had online, and rarely is the in-store deal alone enough. As a single shopper, I expect better mobile and social experiences. I see Black Friday as the single biggest day in the history of Foursquare. The viability and value to the masses will be set this Friday. For retailers, the ability to connect with individuals in the store with fresh, relevant deals is a differentiator worth watching.

Retailers must also cultivate a culture of social shopping that goes beyond a group with circulars in hand. Group-buying signals, such as in-store community trending of “What’s Hot” and flash discounts available via mobile devices will further transform and condition the buyers.

It’s unlikely that any petition of boycott will have enough impact to stem the tide of Black Friday’s move to Thursday. What may ultimately return Black Friday to Friday is the way retailers evolve online and bring social shopping 2.0 to bear. If retailers continue to rely on print circulars and downloadable store maps, they fail to recognize the ongoing evolution of the customer. Annually, groups of women in matching hot pink “I survived Black Friday” t-shirts go out to celebrate and shop. Retailers need to cater to this group and use the tools of today to move this old-school social shopping experience forward to social shopping 2.0.

This article was written by Chris Copeland, CEO, GroupM Search – The Americas, and was  published in ClickZ, November 23, 2011.  Follow Chris on Twitter – @SearchBoss.

Filed under: Emerging Trends & Tech, Social Media | 1 Comment >>

Firefox 8 Gets Social with Twitter Search Integration

by ~ November 18th, 2011

In an effort to help its users navigate the infinite content available on Twitter, Firefox 8 launched this week with a built-in Twitter search functionality. Those who update to Firefox’s latest version will have access to the quick drop-down menu selection where they will now find the social network in the company of Google, Yahoo, Bing, Amazon.com, eBay and Wikipedia as a built-in search option.

As reported on Firefox’s blog:

“Twitter is now included as a search option in Firefox for Windows, Mac and Linux. Twitter search in Firefox makes it easier to discover new topics, #hashtags and @usernames. Twitter search is currently available in English, Portuguese, Slovenian and Japanese versions of Firefox, with more languages to come in future releases.”

The social addition is a part of an upgrade cycle that the popular web browser kicked off this past summer. Firefox’s Twitter tie-in may be one of the most visible, if not the only visible, upgrade to even the most avid Firefox users during the period of continuous upgrades. Firefox 8 is currently available for download here.

 

How will the Twitter integration impact search and social? Here is what our search and social executives had to say about the partnership:

“Firefox making a move to become a more social browser is nice, but it’s clearly just step one. I would expect in a year we’ll look back and see how the browser’s primary role changed from a single- pane shell to multi-pane curation tool.”

 - Chris Copeland, Chief Executive Officer, GroupM Search

 

“The inclusion of Twitter in Firefox 8’s search bar speaks to the changing role of social media in how people connect with the things that matter to them. The buzz happening on Twitter gives users a sense of what’s happening at that moment, and is a unique and valuable source of information when compared to the other search engines included in the browser.”

- Tim Fogarty, Lead Strategist, M80

 

The Twitter-friendly browser promises to be faster than the previous versions, with improved support for HTML5. The feature is available now; come December 20, per Firefox, users can expect to see the next installment of their browser upgrade.

What are your thoughts on Firefox 8’s built-in search functionality? How do you think the social inclusion will impact the search experience?

Filed under: Emerging Trends & Tech, Features, Social Media | No Comments >>

One Move That Would Guarantee Google+ Beats Facebook

by ~ November 15th, 2011

For the past three months, I’ve been trying to rationalize how Google+ would become a serious threat to Facebook. I’ve considered the success that Google+ has experienced in the short term, boasting 25 million users before going to beta as well as current reports of its more than 40 million users. But I then thought, that’s still a drop in the bucket against Facebook’s now 800 million global users. Now, less than 24 hours after the announcement of Google+ Pages, I think if Google is truly going to compete with Facebook, then it needs to act like yesterday never happened and go somewhere Facebook can never go.

Before I delve into the abovementioned, a little history lesson on the search wars between Google and Microsoft is necessary to best illustrate the path I believe Google should take. In the latter part of the last decade, before Bing branding and a Yahoo alliance was forged, Microsoft made a strategic decision to try and move its appeal into a rabbit hole that Google could never go down. The move? Microsoft introduced Cashback, a program designed to reward users for purchasing from Microsoft’s search engine by rebating a variable percentage based on the merchant and product being obtained. Microsoft underwrote a substantial amount of the program and ultimately determined it to be an unsustainable model. So while Microsoft was correct that Google would not follow, it was proven wrong in its views on the possibility of marketshare growth from the exercise.

That brings us back to Facebook and Google (and the threat it poses). At this year’s f8, Facebook introduced radical advancements in the core wall experience with Timeline, important shifts in the “serendipitous” connects made between users using verbs, and expanded the canvas for advertisers accessible through Sponsored Stories. In these moves, Facebook further aligned its own future success with the advertising community, at least financially. Little has been developed to suggest Facebook is going to suddenly improve as a customer acquisition utility versus the retention and loyalty success Facebook is today. This is where Google has the opportunity to strike.

In its early days, Google intentionally avoided taking advertising on any search results pages, a practice it upheld for several years. The founders believed it inappropriate for the user experience connection they were trying to foster. Now, with an empire that includes leadership or near top of category positioning in search, display, and mobile, one could argue that the presence of brand advertising inside Google+ is equally unnecessary at this time.

While Facebook continues to cozy up to brands and encourage the ability to tell stories to an enormous audience, the proposition from Google+ is clearly different for brands in that their opportunities to target and advertise may come from everywhere but Google+. As a marketer, I crave the ability to engage with consumers in natural conversation, to bring to the dialogue content and relevancy to match their intent – be it for discovery or to reach a destination. But that has never been a prerequisite for Google. In fact, there are many signals that suggest Google would prefer a world less-burdened by advertising obligations.

With yesterday’s announcement of Google+ Pages, it’s impossible to now imagine a Google+ without brands. In fact, the starts and stops of user growth on Google+ now suggests that building the platform itself will only get so many to come. Now, Google finds itself needing brands to add consistent and relevant content to drive more widespread adoption.

That said, I believe that a Google+ free of brand advertising inside the platform in exchange for user data usage across all other properties would be a highly valuable transaction for all parties involved. The result – Google gains what drives its engine, user data, and users gain the equivalent of commercial-free programming. Brands are responsible for creating unique content opportunities and sharing environments without directly soliciting inside the space. That would happen elsewhere across the Google network.

If Google+ wants to surpass Facebook and its 500 million daily users, it has to provide a completely different experience. One way to do that would be to amplify the value of consumer control. It would not only distinguish the platform, but it would also put the interjection of Sponsored Stories and Promoted Tweets into conversations on tilt by a Google+ world free from noise that consumers generally wish to avoid while playing up relevancy to match consumer intent, a Google trademark.

Given that Google has gone to market with +Pages, there are two options left. Pretend that Monday never happened and kick brands off. It has already done it once without fatal results, so it’s not impossible – yet, certainly unlikely. Or, the other option is to turn +Pages into a non-marketing-specific vehicle. Allowing brands to be creators and curators of content while requiring the connections and investments to stay outside the realm of Google+.

Google has to provide a “+” to users, and brands will do that through content. Creating a world less beholden to brand paid media, in exchange for a data gold mine, might just be the way to attract users and distract Facebook in the battles to come.

This article was written by Chris Copeland, CEO, GroupM Search – The Americas, and was  published in ClickZ, November 8, 2011.  Follow Chris on Twitter – @SearchBoss.

Filed under: Emerging Trends & Tech, Social Media | No Comments >>

The Common Characteristic of Winning Digital Companies

by ~ October 18th, 2011

Google recently held its annual partner event, Zeitgeist. During the event, I was moved by speakers who focused on hope, opportunity, and personal and professional passion. This is the epitome of what Google is, at its core, when you strip away its sales persona. That said, professionally, I was struck by the simplicity of a quote from Google’s Chief Scientist Peter Norvig that I believe captures the essence of why Google wins – “We don’t have better algorithms. We just have more data.”

Think about that for a second. Google, the company that built a better algorithm, suggests that it was not really about the algorithm, but all about the data. Not just data as an abstract singular item, but a scale of data that has been unmatched in the space. When Bing and Yahoo formed their alliance, it was heralded by the companies as a crucial step in being able to combine data for greater intelligence. A few weeks ago, I sat with a leading local deal company and they shared statistics on the scale at which they were operating. The scale described alone is reason enough for the company to be a credible player. The size of user base and the subsequent data flow being produced will enable serious innovation opportunities.

In this business, you quickly learn that scale opens doors and, without it, you are just posturing and faking it until you either acquire scale or fade away. It is the difference between what Facebook is and what MySpace became. At some point, you either have it or you do not. And, without a doubt, Google has it.

Google has had it for a decade in search. It gained it in display with the acquisition of DoubleClick. It built it post acquisition with Android in the mobile space, and is now going after it in social with Google+. The single greatest difference between Google and every other contender at present is that its scale crosses human behaviors. Apple has access to enormous insight via its devices. Facebook and Twitter have it through the social sharing they enable, while Microsoft has it in the console market via Xbox. But none of those companies have woven the thread across consumer behaviors like Google.

Apple does not have enough market in the PC marketplace to match the iPhone and iPad markets. Facebook has curiously opted out of search. And, while display plus social will be important, it may not be enough without device presence. Microsoft bought its way into search, did something similar with Kinect along with Xbox, and has a poor mobile track record going at present. By contrast, Google’s track record with creating the kind of scale needed to turn data into revenue is largely positive.

When Justin Timberlake portrayed Sean Parker in “The Social Network” and famously suggested that $1 million was not enough and that $1 billion was cool, it was simply another way to precisely say what Peter Norvig said. Google wins and controls the ecosystem because it has the largest repository of data. Google+ is a genuine attempt at a social network. But, make no mistake, the data generated from not only your personal Google+ data, but also the shared social graphing of the +1 buttons on sites is what will ring the register for Google revenues.

When congressional leaders examine the monopolistic tendencies of Google, the question they ultimately examine is whether the scale of Google’s presence eliminates the opportunity for entry into the market. If they are to find against Google, it may very well be because the scale of data is what they deem to be unattainable by others.

There has never been a company that monetized insights better than Google. Every action has a value proposition to multiply brands. But, more importantly, it produces data points for Google itself. And that’s why the company that built the better algorithm can now trade on the data machine it spawned.

This article was written by Chris Copeland, CEO, GroupM Search – The Americas, and was  published in ClickZ, October 11, 2011.  Follow Chris on Twitter – @SearchBoss.

Filed under: Digital Advertising, Emerging Trends & Tech | No Comments >>

Can Google Embody the Mantra of Its Social Network

by ~ October 4th, 2011

With Google+ formally moving into beta, also known as the Google equivalent of full-market release status, it’s time to determine what role Google+ should play for consumers. Is it a cure to Facebook fatigue? A different way to do social, supplementing Facebook and Twitter? Or is Google+ more hype than promise and something consumers can dismiss? All are important questions; success hinges on one the Google+ conundrum. Can Google, the company, embody the mantra of its social network?

In a meeting with Google’s head of social media, Vic Gundotra, and Bradley Horowitz, their head of product management for social, I realized the ambition for Google+ is nothing short of spectacular. The long-range plan is smart and fully obtainable from a technology perspective. It could well redefine the company everyone thinks they know. If Google+ is going to fail, it won’t be because the vision isn’t big enough for the market.

That said, I’m stunned by Google’s reminders in recent weeks that the product was not even to the beta stage. It’s as if Google was shocked by the early success and not ready to release Google+ into the world, without limitations. (This despite the numbers: 25 million reported users in the first 30 days and 40,000 businesses signing up for +Business access before the launch of that product extension.) Yet, Google realizes what they are doing and how it has to be positioned in order to succeed.

And here, the Google+ conundrum enters the picture.

At a Google event in early September, Christian Oestlein, the company’s head product manager for social advertising, stated that to Google, social is “a core human behavior, not a platform,” thus putting Google+ still in the direct line of competition with Facebook in the battle for digital supremacy.

The reality is there is no success guaranteed to Google just because their name is before the plus symbol — not when your competition has 750 million users globally and a firmly entrenched position with brands anxious to alter their communications strategy to become more social.

As the product reached its 90-day mark of the field test and as stories emerged about Google+ becoming “a ghost town,” Google announced new features and beta status. The timing was curious; Facebook’s F8 event introducing timelines completely overshadowed the Google+ stories. However, if Google is building for the long-term, it doesn’t matter what either company does short term.

The timing of the Google+ announcement makes sense if for no other reason than they were starting to be doubted. They developed a quick fan boy culture that liked an alternative to Facebook. The risks of further alienating early adopters through lack of features or other users was not something they could afford, given Google+ is the company’s third attempt to try and makes social a part of their world.

It is clear Google is building for the long-term with Google+. With 40% growth reported in Google+ sign-ups, now nearing between 45 million to 50 million users since moving to open sign-up status. Google is going to have a shot in this space.

Facebook may be mimicking some of the innovations of Google+, but it seems unlikely they will replicate in full. Facebook has a method to its madness as is are not going to jump the tracks over a start-up effort, even from Google.

What Google must do now is to make itsown culture mirror the “social as core human behavior” and be more transparent and public about what is to come. If social is a core human behavior, then Google’s ultra-secretive product launches, infinite beta statuses and general black box approach to search algorithm must be retired.

Whatever is driving people to Google+, it is working. Now Google, the company, must enable more of it by embodying Google+, the social network.

 

This article was written by Chris Copeland, CEO, GroupM Search – The Americas, and was  published on MediaPost, October 4, 2011.  Follow Chris on Twitter – @SearchBoss.

 

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