The end of the Google Experience?
November 1, 2006 at 5:19 pm 2 comments
Users and consumers just love Google Search. They come back again and again to search for the next sites to visit. It is no secret that Google delivers a superior customer experience to its search users, AdWords and AdSence clients. But with serious competition from FAST (A serious search technology and media contender) is this the end of the Superior Google Experience?
Google’s AdWords program for advertisers is today the market’s most comprehensive and advanced advertising program for targeted keyword advertising on the Internet. The advertising program allows any advertiser to select specific keywords, geographical location, language, topic and themes parameters when their ads should be displayed in a Google search portal.
Google AdSence allows anyone who publishes information on the Internet to display ads from Google on their site. The key in Google AdSence is that Google is analysing the content on the individual pages and displaying the ads that methodologically has the highest match between the content the user is reading and the messages from the advertiser. This is the core concept and a very simplified explanation on how Google AdSence ads are presented to its users. As you now probably understand, the ads that are presented to the users are highly targeted and with interest of what the user is reading about.
This tagging of editorial content and matching with commercial advertising messages has proven to increase the user satisfaction and deliver a higher conversion rate to advertiser who generate more targeted traffic to their websites. With the increase of customer satisfaction, Google has built a genuine trust to its services and created switching costs in the consumers mind. This is what I call the Google Experience.
Another large player in search technology and offering organising/tagging of content is FAST. The company has experienced tremendous growth since 2000 and is today a serious contender to offer technology for companies who wants to create unique customer experiences similar to the Google Experience.
The company has recently announced that they will offer a new innovative platform to portals, media companies and e-commerce sites a far more targeted methodology to target content or products with commercial advertising. The concept is based on the same targeting parameters as used by the Goolge Experience, but with the ability to include personal user and browsing parameters collected from customer data bases. This will allow the new search service from FAST to act intelligently towards users and not display the same targeted ads more then a limited number of times to target the commercial messages with browsing patterns accumulated over time.
FAST CEO Mr. John M. Lervik also describes the upcoming service to be reacitve to external parameters such as current local weather, time of day, local events and headlines to further target the commercial messages to the users.
The end of the Google Experience
I doubt this will be the end of the superior customer experience from Google, but today, where Google has a monopoly in providing these advanced advertising solutions, the market welcomes this new innovative solution from FAST. With the new service from FAST, companies can now create their own superior experience by targeting their content, personal customer profiles and external parameters to give their users a innovative and friendly browsing experience.
Entry filed under: Experience Marketing, Marketing Technology. Tags: .
1.
KP | November 2, 2006 at 11:45 pm
Yahoo Search Marketign, Microsoft Adcenter and Ask Ad platform have spent enormous resources trying to catch up with Google Adword. They’ve failed so far. Why should Fast succeed?
The Google Adwords platform generates up towards 70% of Google’s revenues and advertisers are throwing money at it – because it works. Every dollar spent on Adwords generates new customers and sales all around the world.
By introducing Google Analytics for free more and more companies are experiencing the effectiveness of Google Adwords.
This is starting to sound like a Google Adwords rant. I’m sorry about that:) Let the numbers speak for themselves. As soon as a client understands web analytics, they double and triple their Google Adwords spending.
2.
Henrik Mandal | November 3, 2006 at 10:15 pm
Totally agree with all your viewpoints here.
Please note that I am not discussing the Google AdWords or Google AdSence business model, but CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE.
The Customer Experience is a marketing expression of a user’s perceived value of a product or service. On portals, search engines, e-commerce sites, blogs etc. the Customer Experience is often related to the sites ability to deliver updated and interested content for the users (personalization, syndication, ease of use, HCI etc).
The end of the Google Experience is not about FAST competing with Google Search (Google is a consumer brand – FAST is a business-to-business brand), but FAST enabling other consumer oriented brands to create a superior customer experience. Another company that I believe is a strong contender in this market is the UK technology provider Autonomy.
Forward thinking companies are already investing into the Customer Experience and integrating FAST. Let’s look at the Retail and FMCG industries, I recently noticed that Dixon owned “Elkjøp” in Norway are integrating FAST technology on their service to distinct their competition and create a better customer experience. Currently rated as the nation’s third largest online shop, they expect to become the leading shop site within the next year. In vertical solutions such as in Retail and FMCG, suppliers are able to promote their products more effectively in the respective stores (Matching of content with commercial messages).
Better targeting of messages (commercial and editorial) will result in enhanced customer experience and perhaps the end of the Google Experience.
[I would like to mention that Google is in my mind is a very impressive advertising platform available today with all it services including AdWords, AdSence, Analytics, Checkout and Base and is a very successful business model].