Hail to King Google, but why?

Feb/27/2007 10:06 Filed in: Media (Internet)
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Google grabbed 25% of the $15.7 billion companies spent for online ads last year. That's almost $4 billion for a web property where users spend less than 5% of their time. That's right, Internet users spend less than 5% of their time actually searching the rest of the time they are visiting their favorite sites via bookmarks. One has to wonder if marketers are actually thinking about the way their customers use the Web?


OK, when searching for health information people will probably tend to use a search engine but actually we are seeing some trends that indicate that online health seekers are becoming more frustrated with search engines. I heard this loud and clear at my last research when diabetics said that when tried to search for information on diabetes they were bombarded with ads for everything from ED drug pharmacies to diabetic supply stores. Yes there are ways to refine searches and narrow the criteria but remember the Internet is a relatively new channel that people are still learning.

Now consider some of the new models of behavioral targeting that are emerging. According to a recent article in Business 2.0 some models can tell more about you than you could write in a 1000 word essay. They know what sites you visit, how long you stay, what stories you click on and can run optimizers that run 5000 to 10000 calculations to evaluate online ad campaigns. They can tell you if more people clicked on a blue background of your ad than a red one..if the ad with the man was more responsive or the ad with the woman. This ability to laser target is what the Internet has always been about it's just that marketers are finally getting into better ROI models because their shrinking budgets demand more accountability.

Should you allocate of 25% of your online media budget to search? That depends on a lot of criteria such as awareness of the disease state and brand but remember that Google can sell your brand name to other advertisers as well for paid search. The new models of behavioral targeting being offered by Microsoft and Yahoo are certainly the right step but marketers have to become a lot more savvy in describing their audience. We can't simply go by demographics anymore we need a detailed psychographics profile or our target audience.

This author feels that Google has a great product and will continue to evolve but I think they will find that the laws of gravity apply to them and their stock price will come way back down to earth. In the meantime try and think like your customers before deciding to allocate dollars on search. It may save you a lot of money and make you look like a hero.
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