Entries Tagged 'online advertising' ↓

There is a widespread myth that search engines have taken profits away from news websites. A few months ago, Rupert Murdoch said: “Google has devised a brilliant business model that avoids paying for news gathering yet profits off the search ads sold around that content.”

The reality is that news is a lousy business. Period. Even Google doesn’t make money on it. For example, here are Google’s search results for the phrase “afghanistan war”:

Notice there aren’t any ads on the page. This is because ads for “afghanistan war” generate such low revenues per query that Google doesn’t think it’s worth hurting the user experience with a cluttered page. Google can afford to do this on news queries (along with many other categories of queries) because their real business is selling ads on queries where the user likely has purchasing intent. Big money-making categories include travel, consumer electronics and malpractice lawyers. News queries are loss leaders.

It’s an historical accident that hard news categories like international and investigative reporting were part of profitable businesses. The internet upended this model by 1) providing a new delivery method for classified ads (mainly Craigslist), 2) increasing the supply of newspapers from 1-2 per location to thousands per location, thereby driving the willingness-to-pay for news dramatically down, and 3) unbundling news categories, making cross subsidization increasingly hard.

The internet exposed hard news for what it is: a lousy standalone business. Google arguably contributed to this in many indirect ways, including by helping users find substitute news sources. But the idea that Google takes profits directly from newspapers is simply misinformed.

In an earlier blog post, I talked about how sites that generate purchasing intent (mainly “content” sites) are being under-allocated advertising dollars versus sites that harvest purchasing intent (search engines, coupon sites, comparison shopping sites, etc).  As a result, most content sites are left haggling over CPM-based brand advertising instead of sponsored links for the bulk of their revenue.

But there is an additional problem:  even among sites that monetize via sponsored links there is a large overallocation of advertising spending on links that are near the “end of the purchasing process” (or “end of the funnel”). For example, an average camera buyer takes 30 days and clicks on approximately 3 sponsored links from the beginning of researching cameras to actually purchasing one.   Yet in most cases only the last click gets credit, by which I mean:  1) if it’s an affiliate (CPA) deal, it is literally usually the case that only the last affiliate (the site that drops the last cookie) gets paid, 2) if it’s a CPC or CPM deal, most advertisers don’t properly track the users across multiple site visits so simply attribute conversion to the most recent click, causing them to over-allocate to end-of-funnel links 3) if it’s a non-sponsored link (like Google natural search links) the advertiser might over-credit SEO when in fact the natural search click was just the final navigational step in a long process that involved sponsored links along the way.

What this means is there are two huge misallocations of advertising dollars online: the first from intent generators to intent harvesters; the second from intent harvesters that are at the beginning or middle of the purchasing process to those at the end of the purchasing process.  This is not just a problem for internet advertisers and businesses – it affects all internet users.  Where advertising dollars flow, money gets invested. It is well known that content sites are suffering, many are even on their way to dying. Additionally, product/service sites that started off focusing on research are forced to move more and more toward end-of-funnel activities.  Take a look at how sites like TripAdvisor and CNET have devoted increasing real estate to the final purchasing click instead of research.  For the most part, you don’t get paid for the actual research since it’s too high in the funnel.

As with all large problems, this misallocation of advertising dollars also presents a number of opportunities.  One opportunity is for advertisers to correctly attribute their spending by tracking users through the entire purchasing process (in the case of cameras, the full 30 days and multiple sponsored clicks).  Very likely, these sites are currently overpaying end-of-funnel sites (e.g. coupon sites) and underpaying top-of-funnel sites (e.g. research sites). There is also an opportunity for companies that provide technology to help track this better. Finally, if over time advertising dollars do indeed shift to being correctly allocated, this will allow research sites to be pure research sites, content sites to be pure content sites, etc instead of everyone trying to clutter their sites with repetitive, “last click” functionality.

Apple has entered the online advertising business for the first time with its purchase of Quattro Wireless. They are now also competing head-to-head against Google in the mobile advertising market.

Mobile ads will be displayed to users either in a web browser or in a mobile application. Thanks to the iPhone and now Android, web browsing on mobile devices is becoming just like web browsing on the desktop. Sites are often running the same HTML – and the same ads – whether the browser is on the desktop or mobile web. Thus, if an ad network supplies ads to the nytimes desktop version, they’ll also supply ads to the nytimes mobile version. The battle for web publishers on mobile browser-based ads would seem to be the same battle already happening on the desktop web.  This battle is dominated by Google, Yahoo, Microsoft etc. and I can’t imagine Apple is trying to seriously enter the battle at this late stage.

Thus, Apple’s interest in Quattro must be about ads in mobile applications. Apple is currently in a very strong position with respect to app developers, given their tight control over the dominant app platform. How could Google supplant them there? For one thing, Android and other platforms could gain significant market share. But Google could threaten Apple even on ads in iPhone apps. Unless Apple forced developers to use their ad network, iPhone app developers would select the ad network that provided the highest payouts, which – as with all ad networks – would depend heavily on which had the most advertisers.

So the Quattro purchase seems to be mostly about Apple getting a base of mobile advertisers (not publishers) that will allow them to offer competitive payouts on mobile app ads (not mobile browser-based ads).

Google seems to be releasing or acquiring new products almost daily. It’s one thing for a couple of programmers to hack together a side project. It’s another thing for Google to put gobs of time and money behind it. The best way to predict how committed Google will be to a given project is to figure out whether it is “strategic” or not.

Google makes 99% of their revenue selling text ads for things like airplane tickets, dvd players, and malpractice lawyers. A project is strategic for Google if it affects what sits between the person clicking on an ad and the company paying for the ad. Here is my rough breakdown of the “layers in the stack” between humans and the money:

Human - device – OS – browser – bandwidth –  websites - ads – ad tech – relationship to advertiser – $$$

At each layer, Google either wants to dominate it or commoditize it. (For more on the strategic move known as commoditizing the complement, see here, here and here). Here’s my a brief analysis of the more interesting layers:

Device: Desktop hardware already commoditized. Mobile hardware is not, hence Google Phone (Nexus One).

OS: Not commoditized, and dominated by archenemy (Microsoft)!!   Hence Android/Google Chrome OS is very strategic. Google also needs to remove main reasons people choose Windows. Main reasons (rational ones – ignoring sociological reasons, organizational momentum etc) are Office (hence Google Apps), Outlook (hence Gmail etc), gaming (look for Google to support cross-OS gaming frameworks), and the long tail of Windows-only apps (these are moving to the web anyways but Google is trying to accelerate the trend with programming tools).

Browser: Not commoditized, and dominated by arch enemy! Hence Chrome is strategic, as is alliance with Mozilla, as are strong cross-browser standards that maintain low switching costs.

Bandwidth:  Dominated by wireless carriers, cable operators and telcos. Very hard for Google to dominate without massive infrastructure investment, hence Google is currently trying to commoditize/weaken via 1) more competition (WiMAX via Clearwire, free public Wi-Fi) 2) regulation (net neutrality).

Websites/search (“ad inventory”): Search is obviously dominated by Google. Google’s syndicated ads (AdSense) are dominant because Google has the highest payouts since they have the most advertisers bidding. This in turn is due largely to their hugely valuable anchor property, Google.com. Acquired Youtube to be their anchor property for video/display ads, and DoubleClick to increase their publisher display footprint. On the emerging but fast growing mobile side, presumably they bought AdMob for their publisher relationships (versus advertiser relationships where Google is already dominant). The key risks on this layer are 1) people skip the ads altogether and go straight to, say, Amazon to buy things, 2) someone like Facebook or MS uses anchor property to aggressively compete in syndicated display market.

Relationships to advertisers:  Google is dominant in non-local direct-response ads, both SMB self serve and big company serviced accounts.  They are much weaker in display. Local advertisers (which historically is half of the total ad market) is still a very underdeveloped channel – hence (I presume) the interest in acquiring Yelp.

This doesn’t mean Google will always act strategically. Obviously the company is run by humans who are fallible, emotional, subject to whims, etc. But smart business should be practiced like smart chess: you should make moves that assume your opponents will respond by optimizing their interests.

Mary Meeker’s presentation this year on internet trends was all about mobile. Inasmuch as data-heavy research report from a major investment bank can be said to have a “climax,” it was probably these slides:

The assertion seems to be that there is something special about the mobile internet that compels people to pay for things they wouldn’t pay for on the desktop internet.  It is this same thinking that has newspapers and magazines hoping the Kindle or a tablet device might be their savior.

It is certainly true that today people are paying for things on iPhones and Kindles that they aren’t paying for on the desktop internet. Personally, I’ve bought a bunch of iPhone games that I would have expected to get for free online. I also paid for the New York Times and some magazines on my Kindle that I never paid for on my desktop.

But longer term, the question is whether this is because of something fundamentally – and sustainably – different about mobile versus desktop or whether it is just good old fashioned supply and demand.

I think we are in the AOL “walled garden” days of the mobile internet. Demand is far outpacing supply, so consumers are paying for digital goods. I don’t pay for news or simple games on the desktop internet because there are so many substitutes that my willingness to pay is driven down to zero.

What are the arguments that the mobile internet is sustainably different than the desktop internet? One of the main ones I’ve heard is habit: digital goods providers made a mistake in the 90’s by giving stuff away for free. Now people are habituated to free stuff on the desktop internet. Mobile is a chance to start over.

I think this habit argument is greatly overplayed. The same argument has been made for years by the music industry: “kids today think music should be free” and so on. Back in the 90s, I bought CDs, not because I was habituated to paying for music, but because there was no other reasonably convenient way to get it. If tomorrow you waved a magic wand and CD’s were once again the only way kids could buy the Jonas Brothers and Taylor Swift, they’d pay for them. It’s the fact that there are convenient and free substitutes that’s killing the music industry, not consumers’ habits.

As the supply of mobile digital goods grows — the same way it did on the desktop internet — consumers’ willingness-to-pay will drop and either advertising will emerge as the key driver of mobile economic growth or the mobile economy will disappoint. I was going to buy a Chess app for my iPhone this morning but when I searched and found dozens of free ones I downloaded one of those.  At some point there will be lots of Tweetie, Red Laser, and Flight Control substitutes and they too will be free.

Here’s the really good news for the web economy over the next decade.  Consumers are spending more and more time online, yet only about 10% of all advertising dollars are spent there.

Let’s assume that, over time, ad spending on a medium becomes roughly proportional to the time consumers spend using that medium. I doubt there are any technologists reading this blog who doubt that in five years most people in industrialized countries will spend 50% or more of their “media time” on the web.  This means there are hundreds of billions of ad revenues waiting to move to the web.

Advertising is usually divided into two categories: direct-response and brand advertising. Direct-response advertising tries to get users to take immediate action. Brand advertising tries to build up positive associations over time in people’s minds. In the past decade, we saw a massive shift of direct response advertising to the web. The main beneficiary of this shift has been Google. We saw far less of a shift of brand advertising to the web.

It is therefore very likely that most of this new ad spending will be brand advertising.  This is why Google, Yahoo and Microsoft are all so intensely focused on display advertising. It is why they paid huge premiums to acquire Doubleclick, Right Media, and Avenue A.

Right now there are lots of inhibitors to brand advertising dollars flowing onto the web. Among them 1) most of the brand dollars are controlled by ad agencies, who seem far more comfortable with traditional media channels, 2) it is hard to know where your online advertising is appearing and whether it is effective, 3) banner ads seem extremely ineffective and are often poorly targeted, 4) big brand advertisers seem scared of user-generated content, today’s major source of ad inventory growth.

But economic logic suggests these problems will be figured out, because advertisers have no choice but to go where the consumers are.

In a post last week, Paul Kedrosky noted his frustration when looking for a new dishwasher using Google.  I thought it might be interesting to do some forensics to see which sites rank highly and why.

Paul started by querying Google with the phrase dishwasher reviews:

Pretty much every link on this page has an interesting story to tell about the state of the web.  I’ll just focus here on the top organic (non-sponsored) result:

http://www.consumersearch.com/dishwasher-reviews

clicking through this link takes you here:

Consumersearch is owned by About.com, which in turn is owned by the New York Times.

So how did consumersearch.com get the top organic spot? Most SEO experts I talk to (e.g. SEOMoz’s Rand Fishkin) think inbound links from a large number of domains still matter far more than other factors. One of the best tools for finding inbound links is Yahoo Site Explorer (which, sadly, is supposed to be killed soon). Using this tool, here’s one of the sites linking to the dishwasher section of Consumersearch:

http://www.whirlpooldishwasher.net/

(Yes, this site’s CSS looks scarily like my own blog – that’s because we both use a generic Wordpress template).

This site appears has two goals: 1) fool Google into thinking it’s a blog about dishwashers and 2) link to consumersearch.com.

Who owns this site?  The Whois records are private. (Supposedly the reason Google became a domain registrar a few years ago was to peer behind the domain name privacy veil and weed out sites like this.)

I spent a little time analyzing the “blog” text (it’s actually pretty funny – I encourage you to read it).  It looks like the “blog posts” are fragments from places like Wikipedia run through some obfuscator (perhaps by machine translating from English to another language and back?).  The site was impressively assembled from various sources. For example, the “comments” to the “blog entries” were extracted from Yahoo Answers:

Here is the source of this text on Yahoo Answers:

The key is to have enough dishwaster-related text to look like it’s a blog about dishwashers, while also having enough text diversity to avoid being detected by Google as duplicative or automatically generated content.

So who created this fake blog?  It could have been Consumersearch, or a “black hat” SEO consultant, or someone in an affiliate program that Consumersearch doesn’t even know. I’m not trying to imply that Consumersearch did anything wrong. The problem is systematic. When you have a multibillion dollar economy built around keywords and links, the ultimate “products” optimize for just that:  keywords and links. The incentive to create quality content diminishes.

Google has created a multibillion-dollar economy based on keywords.  We use keywords to find things and advertisers use keywords to find customers.  As Michael Arrington points out, this is leading to increasing amounts of low quality, keyword-stuffed content. The end result is a very spammy internet. (It was depressing to see Tim Armstrong cite Demand Media, a giant domain-name owner and robotic content factory, as a model for the new AOL.)

Some people hope the social web — link sharing via Twitter, Facebook etc — will save us.  Fred Wilson argues that “social beats search” because it’s harder to game people’s social graph.  Cody Brown tweeted:

On Twitter you have to ‘game’ people, not algorithms. Look how many followers @demandmedia has. A lot less then you guys: @arrington @jason

These are both sound points. Lost amid this discussion, however, is that the links people tend to share on social networks – news, blog posts, videos – are in categories Google barely makes money on. (The same point also seems lost on Rupert Murdoch and news organizations who accuse Google of profiting off their misery).

Searches related to news, blog posts, funny videos, etc. are mostly a loss leaders for Google. Google’s real business is selling ads for plane tickets, dvd players, and malpractice lawyers. (I realize this might be depressing to some internet idealists, but it’s a reality). Online advertising revenue is directly correlated with finding users who have purchasing intent. Google’s true primary competitive threats are product-related sites, especially Amazon. As it gets harder to find a washing machine on Google, people will skip search and go directly to Amazon and other product-related sites.

This is not to say that the links shared on social networks can’t be extremely valuable.  But most likely they will be valuable as critical inputs to better search-ranking algorithms. Cody’s point that it’s harder to game humans than machines is very true, but remember that Google’s algorithm was always meant to be based on human-created links. As the spammers have become more sophisticated, the good guys have come to need new mechanisms to determine which links are from trustworthy humans. Social networks might be those new mechanisms, but that doesn’t mean they’ll displace search as the primary method for navigating the web.

“SEO” (==”Search Engine Optimization”) is a term widely used to mean “getting users to your site via organic search traffic.”  I don’t like the term at all.  For one thing, it’s been frequently associated with illicit techniques like link trading and search engine spamming.  It is also associated with consultants who don’t do much beyond very basic stuff your own developers should be able to do.   But the most pernicious aspect to the phrase is that the word “optimization” suggests that SEO is a finishing touch, something you bolt on, instead of central to the design and development of your site. Unfortunately, I think the term is so widespread that we are stuck with it.

SEO is extremely important because normal users – those who don’t live and breath technology – only type a few of their favorite websites directly into the URL bar and for everything else go to search engines, most likely Google*.  In the 90s, people talked a lot about “home pages” and “site flow.” This matters if you are getting most of your traffic from people typing in your URL directly.  For most startups, however, this isn’t the case, at least for the first few years. Instead, the flow you should be thinking about is users going to Google, typing in a keyphrase and landing on one of your internal pages.

The biggest choice you have to make when approaching SEO is whether you want to be a Google optimist or a Google pessimist**. Being an optimist means trusting that the smart people in the core algorithm team in Mountain View are doing their job well – that, in general, good content rises to the top.

The best way to be a Google optimist is to think of search engines as information marketplaces – matchmakers between users “demanding” information and websites “supplying” it. This means thinking hard about what users are looking for today, what they will be looking for in the future, how they express those intentions through keyphrases, where there are gaps in the supply of that information, and how you can create content and an experience to fill those gaps.

All this said, there does remain a technical, “optimization” side to SEO. Internal URL structure, text on your landing pages, and all those other things discussed by SEO consultants do matter.  Luckily, most good SEO practices are also good UI/UX practices.  Personally I like to do all of these things in house by asking our programmers and designers to include search sites like SEOMoz, Search Engine Land, and Matt Cutts in their daily reading list

* I’m just going to drop the illusion here that most people optimize for anything besides Google.  ComScore says Google has ~70% market share but everyone I know gets >90% of their search traffic from Google.  At any rate, in my experience, if you optimize for Google, Bing/Yahoo will give you SEO love about a 1-6 months later.

** Even if you choose to be a pessimist, I strongly recommend you stay far away from so-called black hat techniques, especially schemes like link trading and paid text ads that are meant to trick crawlers.  Among other things, this can get your site banned for life from Google.

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