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Posts Tagged ‘adam heimlich’

Google Gets Closer to the Dark Side

Friday, April 20th, 2012

Larry Page Moving to the Dark Side

At Razorfish Search we’re wincing in anticipation of the day Larry Page snuffs out Exact Match, a beautiful bit of engineering that delivers EXACTLY what we paid for. If yesterday’s post on the Google Blog — announcing the new default option of including misspellings and plurals with exact match — is any indication, Google is going to slide into evil with a level of transparency and a sense of history that would make an oil company blush.

The post didn’t mention that Google’s new matching is exactly the same as Yahoo’s unlamented “Match Driver,” a factor in advertisers’ preference for Google back in the days when the two companies competed in search. The post also didn’t mention the likely impetus for this change: a surprising 8% year-over-year CPC decline that put a damper on GOOG’s Q4 earnings call. Seems a few too many Google customers found out you can get more conversions for less money with a smart keyword strategy of multiple-match-type buys of the same keywords. (Razorfish didn’t see the 2011 CPC decline – presumably because our clients have been enjoying these discounts for years.)

Rolling back the glorious precision of exact match is one way to “earn” more per click. If Google were our client, though, we’d point out angering your best customers and being less than straightforward about the decision is a tough way to win Likes and Friends. Oh, right — we mean +1s. Whatever.

Page vs PageRank

Wednesday, January 25th, 2012

There are so many Google product releases and industry news bulletins about their implications, it’s easy to miss a big one. We’re calling attention to www.focusontheuser.org, a project designed by interested Google-watchers, to highlight a monumental decision by the search giant: to overrule its ranking algorithm in promoting Google+.

The product in question – “Search Plus Your World” – was marketed as simple elevation of relevant social links in search results. The people behind focusontheuser built a widget to demonstrate that, actually, the new product cherry-picks Google’s own social results from Google’s index, no matter what the holy algorithm has deemed most relevant to the user’s query. It does indeed look very much like “Search Plus Your World” lifts Google+ results above Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn results that Google’s search algorithm correctly ranked higher.

This flies in the face of Google’s culture, core to which is the belief that optimal engineering is the optimal business plan. No wonder the decision is causing a wave of disgust in the developer community. It’s fascinating that Google has released no statement defending the decision (we requested a comment and waited 48 hours before publishing this post). Google resisted the business case for advancing its own properties via search throughout Eric Schmidt’s 10-year tenure as CEO. It seems co-founder Larry Page feels differently now that he’s the one reporting quarterly earnings. The fact that Google’s communications department doesn’t have its story straight yet suggests this huge decision wasn’t even thought through.

How Google Could Sell More

Friday, March 25th, 2011

How Google Could Sell More

Many of us at Razorfish Search enjoyed the pep talk Google’s John Nicoletti delivered to search marketers in this week’s AdAge. We hope we will indeed be perceived by clients to be “masterminds” and “the next generation of Mad Men.”

Nicoletti’s point is that SEM, an oddball medium for many years, is starting to look like the first 21st-Century marketing channel. Client interest in “always-on” campaigns is suddenly intense. The value of search marketers’ ability to orchestrate real-time interaction with engaged customers, utilizing creative informed by rigorous quantitative measurement, is intensifying right along with it. We’d quibble with Nicoletti’s characterization of accountable digital display as new (it’s new to Google, foundational for Razorfish), but couldn’t agree more with his conclusion that the emerging market for integrated digital services rightfully belongs to those who’ve already driven great results through strategic activation in an auction environment, mastery of optimization technology and actionable analytics.

It occurred to us, after reading the piece, that Google’s position mirrors that of its agency partners. That is, Google must also transition from a search-centric approach to meet rising demand for stellar mobile, social and display performance. So we thought we’d return the favor and try to pep Google up for the parallel challenge it faces.

The reigning chief organizer of all the world’s information has a dazzling product roadmap but no guaranteed advertiser dollars beyond search. It’s less clear what Google is selling in 2011 than today’s hot media product, Facebook. Everything Facebook creates will be placed in the trendy “Social Media” category. To compete long-term, Google is going to have to bring the same degree of focus it brought to selling search to selling a much broader array of ad units. The company’s tradition of hiring only the best and brightest should serve it well during this period of transition. Google can thrive by paying more attention to how media decisions are actually made, and by operationalizing a more nimble approach to sales.

Identify the best customers. When presenting its display, mobile and social innovations to large organizations, Google is selling into a maelstrom of competing client and agency interests. To navigate the churning waters of this volatile new market, Google should place strategic bets on certain organizations and individuals, investing in multi-sales-cycle relationships by gradually earning trust. Specifically, Google should put its relationship chips on executives and agencies most likely to own integrated measurement.

Appreciate the toolset. Until large marketing organizations integrate their online, offline, short-term and lifetime-value measurement platforms, the business sense of any cross-platform or social advertising initiative will be less than clear. Google has in the past seemed to want to own measurement, and Facebook might make the same mistake – a non-starter for enterprise clients. The best approach is to provide free tools that help with measurement, and train your sales team in all the tagging and tracking tools their clients utilize. A free, enterprise version of Google Analytics would be ideal. If that can’t happen, Google should make sure its sales pitches come with tailored tracking instructions for the client’s toolset.

Leave Analytics to the Consultants. The notion of a major advertiser changing its media mix because of a free study conducted by an interested publisher is so obviously silly, it took a company of engineering geniuses to try and bring it to life. We love Google’s PhDs, but positioning a custom analysis to satisfy the political needs of a big company is outside their skill set. Agencies are experts in client politics, and lots of companies get paid for an unbiased perspective on large data sets. If a client can’t invest in digital media without an expensive analysis he won’t pay for, that’s a big problem – but it’s not a math problem.

Innovate downstream. Google’s engineers seem determined to address every possible scenario of consumer curiosity with a handy utility. At times, it looks like Google hopes to market this wildly diverse suite of products according to plans designed without client contact in Mountain View and Chelsea. What works better for Google are sales experts empowered to meet large advertisers where they are. By lending its client-facing sales reps more control over what they sell, when and to whom (and which agency they partner with and even what they call the products), Google can reap valuable feedback that a more pushy approach bypasses. By reducing top-down directives, they’ll also learn who on their staff has what it takes to read the changing market and reel in big sales.

Rethink C-level access. It’s not quite enough for Google to contact the right customer, customize pitches for clients’ platforms and position advertising products squarely against client goals. There’s also a question of timing. Google can seem careless with its access to bigshots. Experiences over the past two years should clarify for Google the difference between being the hot media property and having a real chance to influence the way large marketing organizations operate. The good news for Google is that their brainpower guarantees them credibility as the aura of hotness inevitably moves on. The trick now is to treat executive access as a non-renewable resource, and exhibit the courage to hold off on big pitches until the preconditions for organizational change have been met.

The vision of users digitally engaged as they research, shop, kill time, travel, advise, complain and socialize is already realized. Every consumer-focused company is working toward an upside for them, but none are as well positioned as Google. Seizing the opportunity to transcend its success in search could be a simple matter of partnering better.

Integrated DR Marketing for Multi-Channel Retailers

Wednesday, August 18th, 2010

Last month, Razorfish Search kicked off Practical Steps Towards Integrated Direct-Response Marketing, a POV series written by Adam Heimlich, Group Search Director at Razorfish, in collaboration with Google and vertical experts within Razorfish.

This month, we’re pleased to bring you Part Two of the series: Integrated DR Marketing for Multi-Channel Retailers. Co-authored by Adam Heimlich (Razorfish) and Brett Goffin (Google), the whitepaper outlines steps to integrate digital into the existing acquisition and retention efforts of multi-channel retailers. We want to hear from you, so read it and share your thoughts.

In case you missed it, here’s Part One of the series: Google’s Development Roadmap: More Info in More Places

Practical Steps Toward Integrated Direct-Response Marketing

Friday, June 25th, 2010

Practical Steps Toward Integrated Direct-Response Marketing is a series of whitepapers offering clear instructions on how to improve ROI this year. Developed by Razorfish Search in collaboration with vertical experts from Google and marketers from Razorfish’s Media, Analytics, CRM and Ad Exchange departments, the series aims to cut through the hyperbole surrounding new advertising technology by telling executives exactly what they need to know. Razorfish believes a rare opportunity is at hand, and that sound guidance on measuring cross-channel activity, unifying views of the customer, testing contact strategies and optimizing creative are required for early success. Practical Steps… brings the broad experience of digital natives to bear on the core challenges of large marketing organizations.

Part 1 of the series is “Google’s Development Roadmap: More Info in More Places,” currently available at Razorfish.com. Forthcoming chapters will focus on specific verticals, starting with retail. All whitepapers in the series take an evolution-not-revolution approach, delivering recommendations on how to enhance offline direct-response efforts with online data. Razorfish believes success at integrated marketing is less a matter of tearing down traditional DR than of achieving the ability to learn new tactics that provide reproducible results.

We want to hear from you! Post comments or email us at razorfishsearch@razorfish.com