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Wednesday, August 12, 2009
In his SES keynote today, Nick Fox rolled out new material. If not news announcements per se, the talk contained high level talking points about fresh directions the Google advertising programs will take, as well as a review of some possibly outmoded assumptions that have driven the ad formats, keyword auction, and product mix to date.
Two of the key takeaways for me at this juncture are:
- Small local businesses like plumbers (but importantly, many other types of businesses) shouldn't necessarily have to mess around with custom keyword research. Their business type and advertising objectives should theoretically translate more seamlessly into a media buy, at least removing some of the intermediate steps and experimentation so many of us are accustomed to. How quickly Google moves forward with ad programs that reflect this principle is anyone's guess. But it's quite possible you'll see a mix of parallel offerings: more attention paid to classifieds, product feed uploads, etc.
- The end of the Model 'T' ad format? Nick mentioned the Henry Ford "you can have any color, as long as it's black" analogy, tying it to the current search ads format: "you can have any kind of ad, as long as it's got a blue headline, two lines text, and a green display URL." He seemed to imply that Google could begin experimenting more radically with ad formats, even on Google's own sites, and maybe even on the core AdWords inventory - search results pages.
Perhaps noteworthy: in a recent post here, I compared the current state of Google (in need of more easy-to-follow search listing processes and ad buying that ordinary businesses can understand) to the Progressive Era (roughly the same era as the Model T).
Posted by
Andrew Goodman
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