Google has announced that it will now be accepting 3^rd party ad serving tags for its placement targeting network in the US and has plans to roll this out in the UK in the near future.  This is a big step for them and no doubt is linked to the double click acquisition in some way.  The Google Image ads network has long been a no go area for media planners due in no small part to the fact they didn’t accept 3^rd party tags.  This announcement could mean a big growth spurt for the network as it should attract more advertisers which in turn should attract more publishers and also publishers of a higher quality.  I would argue that Google needs to clean up their network a little in order to improve quality but you cant dispute the fact they have a large number of sites on board in a large number of verticals which could be tempting for the niche advertisers trying to build an effective media plan.  There’s no doubt the ability to select individual sites, the flexible pricing and now the acceptance of 3^rd party tags makes Google a viable option for future media plans and one good media planners should investigate.

So after all the hoopla about Google removing the trademark protection from its Adwords system (of which I only got chance to write about once as I was too busy doing something about it at work!) what was the outcome?  The removal happened on Monday (bank holiday, coincidence? I think not) while most of us were enjoying the good weather or a badly played round of golf in my case.  You can be damn sure there were no affiliates out on the golf course as they were all in-doors getting on as many brand terms as possible to make the most of the changes.

The net affect from what I have seen is the obvious rise in brand ownerships CPCs (about 30-60p increase on average) which is a big deal if you are somebody who relies no their brand sales to bring down the overall cost of the medium.   Affiliates and clued up competitors are having a field day at the moment with not many people following Tesco’s moral stance of not bidding on competitors terms.  I personally think it will all begin to die down as people realise the inflated CPCs they are going to have to pay to bid on competitors terms due to their lack of quality score will see a lot of them decide it is not worth the bother.  But many companies are going to have to review their affiliate strategy and make sure they have clear guidelines on what is allowed and what isn’t otherwise they will end up paying out a small fortune to affiliates who are doing nothing more than brand bidding.

So Google have finally done it.  Sacrificed their morals on trademark protection in the name of more revenue by opening up all brand terms, whether registered trademarks or not, to anybody who chooses to bid on them.  This has been their system in the US and Canada for a while now and their arguement is that it provides a better user experience by offering the searcher companies which provide the same product or service as the one whose trademark they have searched for.  The changes will come into play on May 5th and from this point any advertiser will be free to bid for any brand terms they choose.  Fittingly this is a bank holiday in the UK and so the mayhem which will undoubtedly unfold will do so when the majority of industry representatives are away from work!  If you remember what happened when Google made changes to their minimum bid system (and it all went t*ts up!) it makes you wonder whether this date has been set intentionally by the big G.

So cue brands bidding on other brands, hiking the prices out of spite and affiliates of a field day.  But will this be the case?  No doubt initially companies will begin to bid on their competitors terms thus raising the price the brand owner has to pay.  But how will the quality score deal with this? Well you would like to think the competition will have to pay hefty minimum CPCs to even list in the first place given that their websites will have no relevancy at all to the keyword.  But will the big boys care about this?  They will probably be more concerned with stealing their competitors traffic and be willing to pay the price. 

Theoretically they wont be able to include the trademarked term in their creative but that doesn’t account for DKI which, no matter what Google suggest, isn’t going to change any time soon to combat this.  Therefore a clever search engine marketeer will get round this quite easily.

What do I think will happen?  Brand CPC’s increase, affiliates have a field day, the overall cost of PPC increases, and then when it all dies down it is back to business as usual and people forget the day brand protection was in place.  The trick is for companies to have a plan of action for May 5th, to know how they are going to deal with their affiliates, to develop and stance on competitors terms and closely monitor the first couple of weeks after this change comes into place.  Then to reassess and get on with the business of generating leads from paid search, after all we are all at the mercy of Google anyway, so why bother trying to fight it!

The adwords blog has announced the launch of a demographic bidding beta test and is offering the chance for advertisers in the UK and the US to sign up for the trial.  Reading into the release the targeting is only going to be available on the content network placement network and is dependent on the publisher site having the capability to provide the information on the users.  If the site has this information, more often than not through a sign in system, then it will be shared anonymously to Google and the appropriate ads.

From the detail in this article the benefits of this system over MSN’s own demographic targeting system is that the system will allow you to up weight your bids by a higher percentage (MSN’s limit is 150%) and that you will also be able to choose not to show your ads to certain audiences.  This is certainly an advance on MSN but the impact of it will be limited by the reliance on the publisher site and the fact that the targeting wont apply to the main Google search results, where it could have most benefit.  This is obviously due to the fact that you dont need to be signed in to Google to use it although they could have implemented it for those people who have a Google account and perform searches whilst signed in.  Maybe that will be in the next release, I suppose we’ll have to wait and see.

With the launch of their new product, pay per action, is google encroaching on the affiliate marketplace?

It was an obvious step to make in the evolution of search, it started as a cost per impression based marketing (and in some markets still is), then move to a cost per click metric and now cost per conversion, taking the product further and further down the buying cycle. This obviously removes the majority of the risk for the advertiser and a lot of businesses will welcome the move. I mean, why not? its what the industry would call a “no brainer” if you are only paying for the sales you receive and you know your acquisition costs it is business without the risk.

Google’s motives are a little less clear. Obviously they will steal some market from affiliate channels by launching this, they will also potentially attract more advertisers who dont want the limited risk of PPC. Due to one of the caveats involved (you must use google analytics to track) it will also increase the user base for its analytics tool so a double benefit to them.

On the limitations side you must be paying for an action of which you recieve >500 of in the last 30 days. This limits smaller businesses and also means it may not be applicable to larger transactions or those further down the buying cycle. A car insurance campaign for example might not be receiveing 300 sales in 30 days but it will most likely be getting 300 quotes. They therefore may be willing to pay a set fee for each quote based on an average conversion to sale and their acquisition targets.

It will be interesting to see if this product takes off and how effective it is. Is it the next big thing or just another one of those products google wants to be the first to launch but will never take off?