The Real Reason for Google’s Push for Autonomous Cars: Advertising
A very interesting story recently broke regarding the legality and politics of autonomous vehicles. From CNN: “Nevada became the first state on Monday to approve a license plate for prototypes of “autonomous vehicles” that drive themselves.” This, of course, is referencing Google’s initiative to develop a fully autonomous vehicle; highlighted by a blind man ‘driving’ the Google car in this CNN video as he exclaims, “look ma, no hands!”This is a huge step for Google, despite the story being more of a publicity stunt via Google and the State of Nevada than any sort of actual technological breakthrough. However, the fact that Nevada is willing to back such a controversial initiative is telling. There has always been quite a bit of backlash to the thought of humans legally getting driven by a ‘hands free’ vehicle within the next ten years. Questions about safety, legality, and feasibility have all been thrown into the mix by detractors. However, these types of questions have never deterred Google (or Nevada) in terms of pushing a controversial project that can potentially become a cash cow.
In fact, Google and Nevada are perfect partners. For Nevada, and more specifically, Las Vegas, the revenue generation options for autonomous vehicles are appealing. Picture slot machines in your rental car so you can get an early jump on the gambling even prior to arriving at the casino. Perhaps even some complimentary libations to loosen a patron’s wallet strings prior to arrival.
For Google, everything often circles back to their primary source of revenue: advertising. Currently, Google faces some legal / ethical boundaries in regards to serving ‘full fledged’ advertising to drivers. How would it look if a driver crashed their car because eye captivating ad imagery suddenly flashed across their windshield? However, take away the primary problem in that advertising equation – the driver – and you have yourself a magnificent form of marketing.
Businesses will literally gain the ability to pull cars into their premises as if they had a tractor beam. Imagine this: an ad splays across a autonomous vehicle’s windshield, perhaps touting the best burger in San Francisco, as the car whizzes down 101. The human ‘operator’ decides it looks appetizing, and simply clicks the display, which immediately re-routes the car directly to the restaurant parking lot.
Of course, there are quite a few hurdles to be crossed – legal, political, and technological – in order for this scenario to become a reality. However, Google has been known to work the ‘long tail’ strategy in order to achieve their goals; building an entire platform from the ground up to indirectly create an advertising eco-system doesn’t seem so unfamiliar. Perhaps Google is telling us that, for them, there really is no difference between the internet highway and the real highway.
Google Glasses Advertising Update
Google recently released a video emulation of what it would be like for a wearer to experience the world through it’s upcoming product – Google glasses. The video is complete with the wearer checking the weather when looking out the window, getting directions as he walks down the street, meeting a nearby friend through Google+, and even letting his girlfriend see the sunset through his eyes as he watches it from a rooftop. It all sounds very romantic – however, there is one thing currently missing from the ‘vision’ that is ubiquitous to most Google products and certainly their primary business model – advertisements.
Where are the PPC ads laid out by Google Adwords? After all, reaching out to users as they literally are looking at products & services could be an extremely effective platform. Although there are surely some kinks to be worked out (such as how a user might click on an ad, as well as preventing potential hazards from blocking your field of view) Google’s ad team is surely working hand in hand with the team at Google X for seamless integration.
There are also quite a few worries that have come up as far as the injection of advertisements into this new world of augmented reality. The vocal community over at Reddit even re-tuned a shot from the video with some interesting injected ad placements and also have been having a lively conversation about the topic.
Posted in Adwords, Google, augmented advertising, google glasses, ppc
Tagged Adwords, augmented reality, Google Glasses, Google Glasses Ads, Google Glasses Video, Google X, ppc
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Franchise Marketing Tip of the Day: Adwords – Making Use of Your Trademark
Many franchise companies as well as most businesses have proprietary names and brands that are trademarked. This tool can be utilized very effectively through Google Adwords and any other pay per click marketing platform that includes ad titles and copy.
Including a ‘TM’ or ‘®’ symbol within your ad title or copy can visibly improve the click through rate of your advertisement. From a customer’s perspective, this adds credibility to your advertisement and lets you stand out from your competitors. Especially given the fact that you have very limited space to convey a message in your ppc ad, this simple symbol can convey a world of meaning in only one character.
If you are bidding on your own brand name, this is the perfect place to utilize a trademark symbol to separate yourself from competitors that might also be trying to bid on your name and related keywords. Although in the past there was some debate over whether or not to bid on your own name, the general thought today is it’s probably a good practice in most industries and markets. Although there is the chance you could be cannibalizing clicks that would otherwise go your free organic listings, that in general is better than your competitor stealing clicks when high potential customers are specifically looking for your services. In addition, bidding on your brand name and utilizing a trademark symbol in your ad copy can bolster your overall ‘page presence’ which can have a huge effect on a customer’s ‘purchase psychology’ (and therefore improve click through rates and conversion rates overall)
For more information on Franchise PPC or SEO Marketing, feel free to contact us and we’d be glad to answer your questions.
How Will Google Adwords Incorporate Augmented Advertising?
The big news from Google this week came out of the company’s secret Mountain View ‘Google X’ laboratories that work on long term R&D projects. The New York Times reported that Google’s rumored ‘augmented reality’ glasses would be released to consumers by the end of 2012. The glasses will run on the Android OS as well as attach to an Android smart phone or tablet, imbuing its wearer with the magical ability to see a different digital dimension as he looks at the world around him.Augmented reality isn’t new – there are already a plethora of Android and iPhone apps that enable a user to point their phone’s camera at storefronts and historical landmarks to pull up relevant facts and reviews. However, the glasses add an invaluable ingredient to the augmented reality stew – the option to completely ‘plug in’ to a different world. Although the difference between holding a phone up and wearing a heads up display seems logistical at most, the change is literally worlds apart. Imagine walking around downtown and seeing digital edits everywhere – notes from friends, city street soundtracks, construction notices, public transportation estimates, and advertising.
The last note is clearly why Google is moving to become the emperor of augmented reality. Adwords advertising already reaches users through search results, display network websites, YouTube videos and mobile sites – the next major foray is the real world. The effectiveness of placing customized ads into the real world – ala ‘Minority Report - would be unquestionable. Privacy and ethical concerns are obviously an issue, but then again they’ve always been an issue with the internet and that hasn’t stopped advertising from spreading to every corner of the web.
The real question is how Google will fuse augmented advertising and its Adwords platform. The company’s most successful and lucrative programs have always been Pay-Per-Click (PPC) driven. Will users be served ‘tidbits’ on their heads up display that entice them to ‘click’ to find out more? Or will augmented advertising be primarily impression driven; almost a step backwards to the old world style of billboards and paper pamphlets.
This new realm of advertising could actually become a bridge between the primarily data driven digital marketers who work with PPC and SEO and ‘old-school’ advertising agencies who create expansive visual brands. For a user that is ‘plugged in’ to augmented reality for a large portion of their day – simple text ads floating around probably won’t cut it. A user will require a more elegant advertising experience that seamlessly works into their line of sight.
Those advertising agencies that are at the cutting edge of both worlds and can also be open to new creative solutions, will likely be the next generation’s leaders.
PPC & Adwords Campaigns for New Movie Releases
Pay-per-click campaigns, and more specifically Google Adwords campaigns, are continually becoming utilized in more industries to garner attention for upcoming products. One industry that appears to be catching on to usefulness of Adwords lately is Hollywood. I recently searched for the MMA movie ‘Warrior’ (made by Lionsgate) and was greeted with a well-made Adwords ad front and center:
Adwords is the perfect addition to a standard Hollywood marketing campaign: it enables an adept PPC management team to launch an effective online campaign in a matter of days while a film is in its pre / early stages of release. Whether a potential movie-goer is searching for movie times, trailers, reviews, actors or general information about the film, they will have the potential to getting exposed to the Google ad.
Another reason why a PPC campaign can be an effective release tool for movie-makers is due to it’s ability to provide control in an otherwise unstable search engine landscape. A movie release can be peppered with professional critiques, user reviews, mash up videos and other forms of bad press that could potentially deter people from going to see the film. Although none of these forms of content are ‘official,’ they could potentially reach a customer’s eyes prior to branded materials. An Adwords ad shows up on top of a search results page (SERP), and if created in an attractive manner, will direct a user to a film studio’s landing page of choice (official movie site, trailer page, fandango, etc.). Having this type of movie advertising control is essential to a successful release.
An Adwords campaign also allows a great deal of user targeting for a movie studio. Let’s take the upcoming film ‘The Hunger Games,’ made by Lionsgate. The studio might want to send specific users interested in different actors within the film to different web pages that are tailored to fans of those actors. Those typing ‘Jennifer Lawrence Hunger Games’ would get a different ad / landing page combination than those searching for ‘Elizabeth Banks Hunger Games.’ These ads would likely perform and convert much higher than standard ‘Hunger Games’ ads because of the specific fan demographic.
Insight Forge is experienced in marketing films through online distribution channels, specifically Adwords and Facebook PPC campaigns. For more information, feel free to get in touch with us at contact@insightforge.com.
Adwords is the perfect addition to a standard Hollywood marketing campaign: it enables an adept PPC management team to launch an effective online campaign in a matter of days while a film is in its pre / early stages of release. Whether a potential movie-goer is searching for movie times, trailers, reviews, actors or general information about the film, they will have the potential to getting exposed to the Google ad.
Another reason why a PPC campaign can be an effective release tool for movie-makers is due to it’s ability to provide control in an otherwise unstable search engine landscape. A movie release can be peppered with professional critiques, user reviews, mash up videos and other forms of bad press that could potentially deter people from going to see the film. Although none of these forms of content are ‘official,’ they could potentially reach a customer’s eyes prior to branded materials. An Adwords ad shows up on top of a search results page (SERP), and if created in an attractive manner, will direct a user to a film studio’s landing page of choice (official movie site, trailer page, fandango, etc.). Having this type of movie advertising control is essential to a successful release.
An Adwords campaign also allows a great deal of user targeting for a movie studio. Let’s take the upcoming film ‘The Hunger Games,’ made by Lionsgate. The studio might want to send specific users interested in different actors within the film to different web pages that are tailored to fans of those actors. Those typing ‘Jennifer Lawrence Hunger Games’ would get a different ad / landing page combination than those searching for ‘Elizabeth Banks Hunger Games.’ These ads would likely perform and convert much higher than standard ‘Hunger Games’ ads because of the specific fan demographic.
Insight Forge is experienced in marketing films through online distribution channels, specifically Adwords and Facebook PPC campaigns. For more information, feel free to get in touch with us at contact@insightforge.com.
Google Buys Motorola Mobility: Pros and Cons
Google just announced the huge purchase of Motorola’s Mobility division, the makers of popular mobile phones like the ‘Droid’ series, for $12.5 billion. This acquisition represents Google’s largest yet, and is being labeled as a strategic move to solidify the place of Google’s Android mobile OS as well as acquire thousands of mobile-related patents in Motorola’s portfolio.The massive purchase has already set off a series of pro and anti-Google sentiments from consumers, techies, and Google’s competitors. Here’s a recap of some of the pros and cons of the Motorola Mobility purchase.
PRO: Motorola Phones Will Get Better Now that Google has thrown itself into the pot of mobile hardware makers, it will benefit it’s Android experience in a number of ways. First, Google will be able to have complete control over Motorola phones: preventing the current practice of clogging a new release with bloatware and pushing towards more of a pure, unlocked Android experience. This has got to be good for the consumer experience, especially those that are purchasing Motorola phones.
PRO: Competitive Bar Will Be Raised for Android Manufactures This will also drastically effect the competitive sphere within hardware manufacturers on the Android OS. There’s no doubt that Google will be creating high performing Motorola phones that leverage the full power of Android with very little gimmicks. This will push other Android manufacturers like HTC and Samsung to raise their bar for performance and take full advantage of the OS.
CON: Other Android Hardware Manufacturers Can’t Be Happy Companies like HTC and Samsung can’t be happy with this purchase; after all, they are building their devices on Google’s Mobile OS. Although Google has said that they will run Motorola Mobility as a ‘separate company,’ other mobile manufactures will probably take that statement with a grain of salt. How can Google truthfully say they won’t gain a competitive advantage over other companies that are running hardware on their own operating system?
PRO: The Purchase Could Help Even Out The Ongoing Patent Wars Over the past several months, it has become clear that Microsoft, Apple and Oracle are waging a war to keep the Android OS from continuing to gain market share. This has been done by them buying a range of patents from Nortell and Novell that were directly related to the mobile / cell radio spectrum. This has been seen by some as an anti-competitive strategy, as the sole reason of the purchase has been to keep the patents out of Google’s hands.
In addition, some of these patents would even force handset makers to pay license fees to Microsoft. With Google’s acquisition of Motorola, they gain thousands of mobile-related patents that will help them even the playing ground and continue the expansion of the open (and competitive) Android ecosystem.
CON: Patent Litigation Will Continue as Always Litigation will likely continue between Google, Microsoft and Apple in the mobile sphere despite Google’s patent purchase. Motorola Mobility was already facing patent litigation prior to the Google purchase, so those problems will continue along with the new ones that the competition is bound to dust up over the next several months.
In addition, although Google has deemed their competitor’s hoarding of patents as ‘anti-competitive,’ the FCC and other companies are likely to see Google’s recent actions with a similar suspicious eye.
Brand Page Battle: Google+ vs Facebook Business Pages
We are all becoming fairly familiar with the ubiquitous Facebook Brand Page. Just to recap: Facebook Profiles are for individuals, wheras Pages are for businesses, celebrities and other ‘entities.’ In a standard Facebook profile an individual acquires ‘friends,’ but a Facebook Page acquires ‘fans.’ All those personalized ads you see popping up in your Facebook side bar? Those are often directed to a company’s customized Facebook Page, where they can promote deals, savings and general marketing campaigns. Facebook even allow for a bit of HTML customization for companies and developers that want their own unique look and feel.Attempting to match Facebook in every social aspect possible, Google+ is also launching their own version of the brand page. So how will the two competing social branding platforms match up? Here’s our take:
Google Is Separating Profiles & Pages from the Start Google+ has specifically told businesses to not create profiles yet in anticipation of their customized company pages. This pre-launch strategy (communication) is already a step ahead of what Facebook did; thousands of companies created FB profiles before the page format was available, resulting in a current strange and confusing mix of profiles and pages for small and large businesses. Google is getting it right by setting the standard from the starting line.
Google Has the Business Experience with Places Google is also a step ahead of Facebook with Google+ Business Pages because they already have a wealth of experience working with local businesses through their Google Places listings. Previously known as Google local, Google Place listings have evolved over the past several years to have better authentication, search visibility and advertising options.
Google has Adwords & Analyticss Google+ Business Pages can also take advantage of Google’s primary revenue source, Adwords & Adsense, to seamlessly integrate with the listings. Advertising from Google search to Google+ Pages will garner a higher click-through-rate and quality score than Facebook pages, and will easily sync with any oncoming advertising features Google plans to launch. In addition, Google+ Brand Pages are also likely to get the full power of Google Analytics behind them, which will enable tracking users to be easy and informative.
Google+ Brand Pages Beat Facebook Pages on the SEO Front Google+ Pages are almost also definitely going to get ranked higher than FB pages in organic search. This will be good cause for a company’s SEO team or firm to opt for Google+ when deciding on a social branding strategy. Although businesses are likely to set up both, they usually end up putting more time and updates into one or the other. It will make sense from an SEO standpoint to invest time with the Google+ Brand Pages.
In the End, It all Depends on Usage All in all, although Facebook already has more businesses and celebrities signed onto their pages, this is one place where Google+ will overtake them through the draw of their existing platforms. That being said, if not as many actual people end up using Google+ for social chatter, their business pages won’t be as effective.
Can Google Real-Time Search Compete without Twitter?
You might have noticed over the last few months that you haven’t been able to access Google’s real-time search features (it was on the left hand-column of the search navigation panel – the ‘updates’ button’). For a while, this feature allowed Google’s users to access live search results that were mostly comprised of updates from Twitter. This was an extremely helpful feature for users who were not yet acquainted with Twitter, or others that simply were too lazy to check both Twitter & Google. Google real time search was extremely helpful: from checking if you just felt an earthquake in san francisco (#SFEarthquake) to getting the live updates from the floor of CES.
However, Google was forced to remove the Twitter results due to a failed contract with Twitter (i.e. they didn’t make a big enough offer.) This essentially rendered real time search useless which Google soon realized and responded by removing the feature all together.
Now Google is saying real-time is back, this time with integrated Google+ results. The question is: will Google+ be enough? If I search for #SFEarthquake will I get a plethora of updates confirming my quake-paranoia? If not, there isn’t much of a point to using the feature. Google needs to make sure they have enough momentum with Google+ to make the real time search a compelling product.
As a business proposition, real-time search is a must have for Google to compete with Twitter and Facebook. Internet users are becoming more ‘in the now,’ and are constantly scrounging the web for live events, political chatter, tv show results and social updates. If Google loses out in this battle, they potentially lose the battle for search all together. Although they still are the most reliable source to find information and knowledge, so was Encyclopedia Britannica.
Not only does real-time keep Google at the head of the search game, but it also is a huge potential money-maker through Google Adwords. It provides the ability for Google to serve relevant and real-time advertising. Adwords advertisers can suddenly become something akin to day traders, constantly monitoring real-time search feeds and inputting relevant advertising alongside the feeds on a micro-scale. Although this type of real-time advertising will require more monitoring and upkeep, ads like this also will likely foster a much higher bidding price (as well as click-through and conversion rates).
Google hasn’t played off real-time search as being a make or break feature, however it is very closely tied to Google+ (which they have been pushing in some shape or form for quite a while now). Google+ by itself is pretty much another variety of social network and doesn’t provide much more than Facebook. However, when Google+ and real-time search are combined with enough chatter, they make a formidable product that is sure to make Mark Zukerberg sweat.
Search Engine Marketing on the Rise
The Search Engine Marketing Professional organization just released a report that shows the search marketing industry will grow 16% this year, bringing the industry to account for about $19.3 billion total.
Not only does this statistic reflect the recovering economy as well as the recent hiring boom in Silicon Valley, but it shows the underlying need for outsourced search engine professionals as the field becomes more diverse. The report highlights a number of interesting statistics on what search engine marketing clients are looking for: 84% are using Facebook, 75% Twitter and 52% Linkedin.
Social media pathways are becoming another necessity for a company to get their brand out there as well as a method to create a feedback mechanism with their customers. In addition, search engine optimization itself has recently undergone a plethora of changes, most prominently the rising importance of Google Places listings and Page Speed. Not only does the constantly evolving SEO landscape make it difficult for average users to understand, but it also makes it hard for a company (that isn’t specialized in the field) to keep up.
Posted in Page Speed, SEM, SEO, google places, social media
Tagged google places, outsourced SEO, Page Speed, search engine marketing, SEM, sem growth, SEO, social media
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What Really Matters for SEO: Page Speed, Not Page Rank.
Many SEO experts used to preach about Google’s infamous ‘Page Rank’ (named after Larry Page) – which provides a 0-10 metric to determine your webpage’s online clout. They would say that Page Rank directly correlated to where a webpage would show up in Google’s search results; a high page rank meant a webpage would more likely show up towards the top of the 1st page, and a low page rank would cast out a webpage to aimlessly float in the untouched search engine wastelands.
Today, Page Rank (which you can determine through various online page rank checker tools) simply doesn’t mean much at all. Take the Google search ‘San Francisco Web Design‘: 2 of the 3 top results have a 0 Page Rank, and most of the top results on the 1st page don’t break a PR of 5. Clearly Google is taking factors other than Page Rank into play when determining the order of these results.
So with the changing SEO times, what does really matter to Google now? Beyond getting the SEO Basics like targeting industry keywords and updating a page with fresh content, what seems to really matter is page load time – or Page Speed. Google’s quest to bolster the speed of the entire internet is underway, and part of them achieving this goal means they want to reward sites that load faster by ranking them higher. Technology Review Magazine recently published an eye-opening article that sources several studies on user interaction based on website load time. Some of the figures are revealing, such as the the percentage of lost conversions jumping from 22% with a 3 second load time to 46% with a 10 second load time. A minuscule 1 second page load delay leads to 11% fewer page views, 16% decreased customer satisfaction, and 7% lost conversions. That’s only 1 second!
It’s clearly in the benefit of Google, users and all website owners to speed up the internet as a whole. So what should you do? Webmasters should be utilizing all the tools at their disposal, including the ones Google provides, to speed up their sites. Page Speed (which could also be named after Larry Page) is here to stay folks, and it matters for SEO on a number of levels, especially because Google ‘says so.’ Stay tuned for a step-by-step guide on increasing your website’s Page Speed.