From the category archives:

google

Google Launches Financial Affiliate Site: Google Advisor

by Adam Killam on May 20, 2011

Or “Why You Shouldn’t Be Naive About Google: It’s a Business People, a Very, Very Large Business.”

You may have heard the saying “He who controls the gold, makes the rules.” Or some such variation. Well for some time the new rule has been “He who controls the traffic, makes the rules.” And in the online world, that means that Google can do pretty much anything it wants.

Case in point:

Earlier today Mashable announced the launch of Google’s new financial advisory site Google Advisor.

After taking a look at the site and the sign up process visitors are encouraged to go through to apply for credit cards and bank accounts and mortgages, I realized this site is simply a competitor to sites like creditcards.com which is a very well known affiliate site. So essentially Google has setup its own affiliate site and has become an affiliate of several credit card companies, banks and mortgage providers.

For those of you who do not know what affiliate marketing is, it refers to an independent marketer who sells a company’s products and services for a commission. Affiliate marketing is a huge business and there are very few well known brand names that don’t have some kind of affiliate program. (Amazon is well known for paying a commission every time you sell one of their books for example.)

The affiliate marketing game has stirred much controversy over the years as many affiliate sites and affiliate programs have been deemed shady, spammy, and of low quality. Google has, in the past, banned tens of thousands of affiliates from using Google Adwords, removed their sites from its organic listings and basically made it difficult for many of them to do business.

So it’s interesting to see them jumping into the space and going head to head with the very people they seem to vilify.

But that’s what you can do when you control massive amounts of traffic. You can make your own rules.

Main take away: Don’t be naive about Google.

It’s not a good thing or a bad thing that Google has launched an affiliate site in my mind. It just is. But don’t think for a second that your favorite search engine might not come after your industry or even your own website if it sees you are making good money. Using Google Analytics, Google Webmaster tools, Google Adwords, the Google Toolbar, and Google.com among other services , Google amasses huge amounts of data it can then analyse and use any way it pleases. So be aware.

Here’s my reply to Mashables post:

Ben, this is a Google version of credtcard dot com which is an affiliate site. So while this looks like a simple “comparison” site, really Google is in fact earning commission for any account that you sign up for through this site whether it be a mortgage, credit card or other service. Just about anyone can sign up to be an affiliate of a credit card company and Google (who happens to own their own affiliate network for those of you who don’t know) is simply copying a business model that has been highly profitable for some of their own partners. So don’t be fooled people: this is a “make money when our visitors apply” business, an affiliate business. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that, it’s a valuable service. I do find it ironic that Google battles with affiliates that use its search engines, banning groups of them and what not, and then they turn around and use the model themselves. But that’s what you can do when you control the traffic! It’s not about gold anymore, it’s “he who controls the traffic makes the rules.”

http://mashable.com/2011/05/19/google-advisor/#comment-17370473

https://www.google.com/advisor

- AK

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New Google Adwords Feature: Google Blimps

by Adam Killam on April 1, 2011

As of today, Google has made a new feature available to Google Adwords account owners called Google Blimps.

The new service allows advertisers to publish text messages on blimps that will circle major events such as the super bowl.

If you have an Adwords account, you should see a notice like this one:

Google-Blimps-1

If you follow the link, you’ll be taken to the following page where you can sign up for Blimps:

Google Blimps

And if you sign up, you get presented with a screen that says:

Google-fools

It’s been a few minutes since I signed up and still no blimp in site flying over Vancouver like I requested. Perhaps there’s a time delay?

- Adam

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Google Instant: Not instantly available..yet

by Adam Killam on September 9, 2010

There was a buzz of information flying around this morning with the announcement of Google Instant. Instant refers to the new way Google will display search results and is an attempt to cut down the time it takes to find what you’re searching for.

However, the service is not yet available in Canada as far as I can tell, at least not as of today. In the mean time, you can.. Update: As Oana pointed out in the comment below, you need to be using Google.com NOT Google.ca in order to use Google Instant.

Check out Google’s promo video on Youtube which gives you an overview of the new interface:

Personally what I will be interested to see is how Instant affects Google Adwords impressions and results.

Will there be a huge increase in impressions as pages and pages of ads get shown rapidly to users as they flip through search results? When I have some answers to these and other questions, I’ll be sure to post them here.

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Adsenseformobileapps.com & Why it’s Showing in Your Adwords Reports

by Adam Killam on June 21, 2010

I came across the following domain name in an Adwords Display Network report (aka: content network): adsenseformobileapps.com.

According to Google, if your content network campaign is opted in to show ads on mobile devices, this is the domain name that shows up for those visitors who see and click on your ad via a mobile app.

For one of our client’s campaigns a lot of clicks were being generated without any conversions, so I added this to the excluded placements list to stop any more wasted clicks.

If you pull reports regularly, you can catch this kind of thing.

Take a look at your own content network reports (e.g check your automatic placements) regularly to see if domains like adsenseformobileapps.com are generating clicks and therefore costs, without conversions. If so, get rid of them!

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Google Display Network Launched

by Adam Killam on June 21, 2010

Google has re-branded the Google Content Network and launched a new site to promote the Google Display Network.

*The Google Display Network (formerly known as the Google Content Network)

If you’re new to the Google Display Network, in a nutshell it is the network of websites owned by Google and sites owned by third party publishers that show Google text and banner ads to their visitors.

Before the re-brand, Google had been placing more emphasis on the Content Network with the launch of multiple new features like ad re-targeting or re-marketing as Google calls it, and a push to get advertisers to try banner ads using its display ad builder.

When you do a search in Google, you’re seeing ads on the search network. When you see an ad on your favorite website and you see the “Ads by Google” image at the bottom of the ad, the website you are viewing is part of the Display Network (Formerly the Google Content Network. The launch of the Display Network website and renaming the content network is really just a PR play to make something that already existed look new again: a classic marketing tactic.)

Here’s a quote from Google that summarizes where you can show your ads using the Display Network:

The Google Display Network will comprise all of the sites (apart from search sites), where you can buy ads through Google, including YouTube, Google properties such as Google Finance, Gmail, Google Maps, Blogger as well as over one million Web, video, gaming, and mobile display partners (our display partners include all of our AdSense and DoubleClick Ad Exchange partner sites that allow text and/or display ads). The Google Display Network offers all ad formats – text, image, rich media, and video ads – enabling you to unleash your creativity and engage potential customers across the Web.

A few of the benefits of the Display Network include:

Clicks and Conversions can be much cheaper than the Google search network
You can target the websites you want your ads to show on
You can use re-targeting to show your ads to people who have visited your site in the past
You can often generate far more traffic than is possible on the search network, even for niche terms
You don’t need to use keywords to show your ads if you choose
You can show image ads, text, ads, video ads, interactive flash ads, and mobile ads

Our clients have known about the content network for quite some time and some have been taking advantage of the power of image ads for a while now to drive traffic and conversions at a lower cost than traditional search traffic.

If you’d like to learn more or want to test driving and conversions using the Display Network, get in touch or give me a call 778.899.4523.

PS: I almost forgot. Google released a study on

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