Scobleizer - Latest Comments in Did Google turn down the revenue knob?

Re: Did Google turn down the revenue knob?

fundraisers — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 17:32:11 -0000

Now if they could just get the ads to be a little more relevant on content sites...

Re: Did Google turn down the revenue knob?

Martin — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 17:59:14 -0000

Very interesting comments.

Though all the messaging about consumer experience, quality score and CPA is relevant Google will not make changes hurting their finance in the short term. They always make sure that any modification improve their quaterly results.

Having less ads per page for advertising and the same amount of advertisers competing for ads should lead to higher price per click.

Re: Did Google turn down the revenue knob?

Roy Weissman — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 14:22:16 -0000

Hello Robert,

Google is always looking for ways to increase their revenues and profits. Their smart enough not to get complacent and to always be considering changes to grow their business.

If this move get their advertisers more traffic and at least comparable conversion rates then its a win for all.

If it doesn't, it could turn into the "haves" and "have nots" with the largest (most well capitalized) advertisers controlling the most valuable key words and the rest of the advertisers moving some of their dollars to other venues.

Re: Did Google turn down the revenue knob?

Richard Brandt — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 13:19:13 -0000

The skeptics don't understand that Google really does put searchers' interests first and advertisers second. It's natural today to suspect the motives of every corporation. That's sad. It's a horrible indictment of business today to know that we assume every company is sleazy and just out to cheat us out of our money. Too many companies are. That's what Google means by 'Don't be evil.'

Google is fussy about ads so as to improve, not detract from, the searchers' online experience--and it used to catch hell from its board for "giving away revenues" by not posting more ads, including flashing multimedia ads.

But Google discovered that it works. On the internet, where it's easy to switch services, the honest company stands out -- to most of us, anyway. The only ads I've ever clickd on are Google ads. A clean page makes Google more appealing. And look at the results: Google keeps killing the advertising competition.

Google has always said relevant ads are important, and has long moved ads that nobody clicks on to the bottom of the queue. Why post ads that nobody ever clicks on? The inability of other sites to understand this amazes me.

Re: Did Google turn down the revenue knob?

Pieter Duteck — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 08:47:51 -0000

Don't forget either that Google tends to raise the price for an ad,which I became aware off since I have +55 websites in Europe.
For some of them,there's no(!) competitor.
Ad costs quadupled in a few weeks.
Result: I simply lowered a lot of my max CPC.
If there would have been a competitor around bidding more( like adwords states is the case),then I would understand.
But no,no no.They prefer to not earn money.
And finally,it's the customer-business that pays for it.
Do the bosses in Google know what their own software is doing.

It's like telling a guy at a petrol pump: well today we'll double your price.
Honestly...

Re: Did Google turn down the revenue knob?

Martin Garcia — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 11:19:04 -0000

Pay Per Action is a lot of hype and time will really tell if it helps small business. I'm sure the same greedy people that benefit from optimized landing pages will also work that system to their own benefit. Similar to what Pay Per Click has become.

Re: Did Google turn down the revenue knob?

Being Fair — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 05:23:35 -0000

Not so sure......

3 adds on the top means actually that only the first 3 search results are presented. To view the rest of the search results you have to scroll down. And THATS a big difference. The adds on the top are killing Google. Period. If you are not in first 3 places you DO NOT EXIST at all. Placing adda on top of the page is KILLING THE SEARCH ENGINE, especially Google (the rest I have ignored already since 2 years..).

Re: Did Google turn down the revenue knob?

Chris Zaharias — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 13:48:25 -0000

Robert,

The Google employee is either wrong or meant something other than the standard definition of 'short-term'.

We manage 3-4% of Google's total revenues on behalf of our clients, and their reducing ads had an immediate positive effect. Other changes to minimum bids also have improved revs, but from our data-driven POV, less ads = more $$ immediately as well as longer-term.

Re: Did Google turn down the revenue knob?

Andrew Johnson — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 00:36:36 -0000

I am suprised fewer people picked up on this -- its the Google quality score in action.

Google doesn't need to display more ads because they are forcing the remaining guys to pay more!

Re: Did Google turn down the revenue knob?

Ankur — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 04:46:19 -0000

Live.com who? What site is it? Never heard of it! Crap, I dont remember when I opened it last. While Google's research may make sense in providing better user experience however advertising hotels reflects hotel's selling sushi, isnt it?

Re: Did Google turn down the revenue knob?

Shakir Razak — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 22:11:27 -0000

Podesta, Sweet!

I'll correct you only because I know if things against a person aren't corrected, they get believed.

I wish, I was a Microsoft employee, then I'd be able to fulfill my potential, as it is I'm a nobody in the middle of nowhere in little old england.

I have no preference for any of these companies.
Did you even read all I said?

While my grammar and spellying/typing can be lazy/fast at times, I find it Highly offensive that your bigoted mind has made a range of assumptions about me based only on your disappointing prejudices and the spelling of my name.

Kind regards,

Shakir Razak

Ps.
sorry everyone else, robert, for that :(

Re: Did Google turn down the revenue knob?

Podesta — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 21:38:11 -0000

I find a theory of 'ad fatigue' believable. The existence of general warning fatigue has been thoroughly substantiated through research. That is: The more warnings people are exposed to the less likely they are to pay attention to them, and, as a result, avoid whatever is being warned against. I would think chronic exposure to ads has a similar effect.

I find myself thinking that the sizeable group of programmers here on visas who read Scobleizer, Microsoft employees I gather, would profit by studying English instead of dissing their employers' competitors on blogs like this one. Their grammar and spelling are painful to read. At first I thought Shakir Razak was someone playing a joke. But, apparently, his skills are really that awful.

Re: Did Google turn down the revenue knob?

Robert Scoble — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 18:30:04 -0000

Shakir: I was at VON. Was lots of fun. I only dropped in for a few hours, though. Everyone wants to have the next video portal. Not sure they'll succeed. Other people are trying interesting advertising approaches. Others are doing interesting distribution systems (P2P, etc). More to come. I am swamped.

Re: Did Google turn down the revenue knob?

Shakir Razak — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 16:12:01 -0000

Thanks Robert,

(I normally email important blogggers directly 1st, rather than diagree, but too late)

Different type of Theory.

There's been real hard research (can't be bothered to google), and I expect you've seen the semi-sophisticated stuff using eye-trackers, beyond that there's EEG-type stuff; WPP.com also provides a whole load of quality research for free.

On the other hand, It might be saying something, That in the search industry, That thinks it's at the cutting edge of our lives/future, (actually how backwards), Google is the only one that's not only done/confirmed the research internally, but more importantly, actually implementing it.

They are soo far ahead, the others can't even match them, let alone get ahead.

Love to know what you thought about the other stuff/concepts/predictions I posted.

Thanks in advance.

Yours kindly,

Shakir Razak.

P.s.
Did you go to Von07, anything interesting?

Re: Did Google turn down the revenue knob?

Robert Scoble — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 15:20:26 -0000

Tyler: I would bet that Google is working on making sure its advertising is most relevant for its content partners as well.

Re: Did Google turn down the revenue knob?

Robert Scoble — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 15:19:23 -0000

>Shakir: a good scientist always tests his/her theories, no matter how obvious they might seem. Often times what's obvious turns out to be not true.

Heck, remember, the VC's and execs at Alta Vista mostly thought that search was over before Google started up. That was the "obvious" belief on the street at the time.

Re: Did Google turn down the revenue knob?

Tyler Martin — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 14:54:25 -0000

I'm wondering if and how this will affect Adsense for content... or is it just for Adwords on Google's results pages?

Re: Did Google turn down the revenue knob?

shravan — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 14:17:56 -0000

"i would think Intercontinental hotel has more to do with Sushi than ‘www.sushigroovesouth.com’ (the 3rd link in google)"

When you search for 'phoenix Sushi' there's an ad on live.com for 'Phoenix new Ringtones'. I wonder what that has to do with Sushi.

Re: Did Google turn down the revenue knob?

Greg Meyers — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 14:02:58 -0000

Even though it is a very interesting post, I think everyone percieves Google as the "all-seeing eye" of what is best for the consumer. But with a Stock Price of $450+ per share, I highly doubt they are going to jeopardize their investor's wallets.

We were taught to believe and implement Quality score to lower costs and improve qualified traffic. But in actuality, they are only training us to play their game (a well designed game at that). There is no doubt they are testing all sorts of scenarios and labeling it better for the consumer. The question is how long will they be playing with our minds and wallets.

Re: Did Google turn down the revenue knob?

Shakir Razak — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 13:55:51 -0000

Naive!

Dear Mr. Scoble,

Love your work, but, with respect, in a couple of days, you've been naive about mobile 2.0 and this/google.

I'll try and keep it short:

How much did google actually waste on this "research". Anyone who know anything who works in advertising knows that the more adverts you have, the less their [commercial] "impact" -hence why advertisers often pay less the more other adverts their are around their own.

Also, google has had a quality algorithm for its Adword advertisers for a while, to ensure their own relevancy and not just for the pure search results.

The spin about doing this for the quality good and better cpc-likelyhood, is also a lie. The less advertisers they have, the more demand their is for those spaces (ad-realestate).

Combine the above 2 in an auction system, and Google is gaming the sytem, and raising the rate at which the minimum buy for a single adword-ad has to be.

However, neither exclude your comments about the uselessness about live.com (-ms (and yahoo) just doesn't seem to have realised that search isn't just the search-result output, but a whole eco system, where google seem to have finetuned every component,) or their actions being in preperation for CPA (So, how many ideas are they going to completely steal of Bill Gross!).

However, what's missed is that they've been preparing for this for a verry long time -what has Merchant been about, Base, maybe even catalogue, Dmarc, Youtube.
They want to be at the point of every transaction, the interface, the grease (-they ain't on the consumers side). They know, as any supermarket, credit-card company, data-miner, marketeer knows that the more information you have based on previous transactions history, the easier it is to be in place to "help" the next transaction along.
I've been waiting since before they floated, don't be surprised if they eventually do, for them to launch a credit card and maybe even a bank (the infrastructure is in place).

They'd probably split the balance between something so proprietory (single destination) and the current merchant affilate network and being freindly with all...
But as they've shown with even search, there's no contradiction between having a primary destination, and multiple competing "partners" as shown by search distribution, adwords and even own-domain Gmail, etc!

"naive....." anyone...

Respect your thoughts.

Yours kindly,

Shakir Razak

Re: Did Google turn down the revenue knob?

seshadri — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 13:49:31 -0000

"What, again, does that have to do with Sushi"

i would think Intercontinental hotel has more to do with Sushi than 'www.sushigroovesouth.com' (the 3rd link in google)

Re: Did Google turn down the revenue knob?

Robert Scoble — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 13:11:24 -0000

>JoeDuck: yes. He told me that they did a lot of research that showed you're wrong.

Heavy surfers typically want fewer ads in their way. I certainly am noticing that Google's ads are more relevant to the searches I'm doing than its competitors. That gets me to believe in Google's ads more, and makes me more likely to click on one of them.

Re: Did Google turn down the revenue knob?

JoeDuck — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 13:05:34 -0000

fewer ads mean less revenue SHORT TERM. But long term the advertising revenue actually goes up. Why? They found their users started trusting the advertising more and were more likely to click on ads.

Are you sure he said this? Heavy users are generally going to want a bunch of ads to quickly scan because as you note in the examples the context matching and queries are usually not specific enough to come up with the "right" ads.

Revenue per click goes down as you add more ads at lower per click rates so it complicates things as well, but I don't get the 'trust' factor he cited - it just does not make sense to me that they are effectively training me to click on ads.

Re: Did Google turn down the revenue knob?

Max — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 12:42:49 -0000

Outside the US, type "Cyprus hotels" into Google and you still get a total of 11 sponsored links - but all for hotels in Cyprus. Same search on Live gives 8 sponsored links - only 1 seems to be remotely relevant.

Re: Did Google turn down the revenue knob?

shravan — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 12:39:46 -0000

Now if only they did something about the spam on blogspot. I wonder how much money Google gets from typosquatting and spam sites.