Google Awarded Location Based Ad Patent
W
hen you read headlines like this it sometimes feels like the rich just keep getting richer. That is until you learn that it was a trek that started six years ago and it’s serendipitous timing is a bonus. One would think that Google is rubbing their hands together and giving their best “Boo ha ha ha ha!” mad scientist laughs in Mountain View because it seems like there is just a little interest these days in targeting ads by location and the money that it could represent.
While the blogosphere was buzzing over the patent Facebook won for its news feed last week, Google earned a killer one too. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office awarded the search giant a patent for using location in an advertising system last Tuesday, which is the emerging business model for most consumer-facing location startups today.
Filed six years ago, the patent is fairly broad. It covers using location for targeting, setting a minimum price bid for an ad, offering performance analytics, and modifying the content of an ad.
This is the kind of news that on the surface looks like it could bring up more of that dirty anti-trust-monopoly talk but it’s far too early to see just how this patent will play out in the market. How Google wields this power is certainly something that remains to be seen but the folks at Digital Beat take a look at what might be brewing.
However, the location-based ad patent may give Google a nice big stick as it goes head-to-head with Apple in the world of mobile advertising. Both companies have acquired or agreed to acquire a mobile ad network in the last three months; Google agreed to buy Admob for $750 million in November, while Apple bought Quattro Wireless in January. Google actually bucked a patent Apple owns last month, when it added multi-touch functionality to its Android operating system. Perhaps this is the card the search giant had up its sleeve.
So as with anything else these days it seems like the battle lines are being drawn in every area of the online space. “Google v. Apple” and “Google v. the Rest of the World and Its Regulatory Bodies” is going to be a common theme for the foreseeable future. I suspect that Google is armed and ready but so is everyone else. It’s starting to feel like the WWE in the Internet space. Maybe there will be a pay-per-view event with Eric Schmidt and Steve Jobs in a steel cage death match. I’d pay for that.
If you are into these kinds of things here is the abstract for the patent
The usefulness, and consequently the performance, of advertisements are improved by allowing businesses to better target their ads to a responsive audience. Location information is determined (or simply accepted) and used. For example, location information may be used in a relevancy determination of an ad. As another example, location information may be used in an attribute (e.g., position) arbitration. Such location information may be associated with price information, such as a maximum price bid. Such location information may be associated with ad performance information. Ad performance information may be tracked on the basis of location information. The content of an ad creative, and/or of a landing page may be selected and/or modified using location information. Finally, tools, such as user interfaces, may be provided to allow a business to enter and/or modify location information, such as location information used for targeting and location-dependent price information. The location information used to target and/or score ads may be, include, or define an area. The area may be defined by at least one geographic reference point (e.g., defined by latitude and longitude coordinates) and perhaps additional information. Thus, the area may be a circle defined by a geographic reference point and a radius, an ellipse defined by two geographic reference points and a distance sum, or a polygon defined by three or more geographic reference points, for example.
So here we go. Patents and lawsuits and egos…..oh my.
How To Take Control Of Your Link Building In 2010
What are your link building plans for 2010?
Me? I’ll be making some significant changes to my business model for the first time in fourteen years. I’ll be training more clients to become their own link builders. I’ve earned 100% of my living by providing link building tactics, strategies and services since 1994. While the methods [...]
….
Digg CEO: Content as Advertising
In a headline from yesterday, the Wall Street Journal tells us that Digg CEO Jay Adelson has one less thing to worry about: “Profitability Is Not A Problem Anymore.” In an interview with Fox Business Network, Adelson addressed the issue of monetizing social sites—but I’m not so sure I’d say profitability isn’t a problem anymore.
Adelson says that last year was the big year for pressure to monetize social sites—”to monetize fast and to get to profitability quick. This year, not as much. We’re back focused on growth.” (That’s all well and good for them—they are “monetizing well.”) And growth is good—but haven’t we learned anything yet? Having a lot of users isn’t a business model. Relying on angel investors for the next 20 years is not a business model. (Then again, I guess focusing on growth means you don’t think about the “next 20 years” just the “next 20 users.”)
Advertising, however, is a business model—and one that seems to be working for Digg, despite the economic downturn. Despite his insistence that they have no need to worry about monetization anymore, Adelson does focus on Digg’s advertising efforts—and recommends their model to newspapers (typos corrected) (because I’m like that).
Right now what we do is we go to these advertisers and try to convince them to create content as advertising. Instead of the standard billboard or whatever you read on the Internet, we’re going to create ads – and we do create ads – that are literally content, so if you click on it you read an interesting story or article, and you put branding next to it. And we get literally get 100 times the clickthrough rate of what a typical ad would get, so that’s good for advertisers. Now if I can take that same concept and syndicate it and put it on a newspaper site and help them monetize it the same way, I can help them solve their problems.
But advertising isn’t a panacea, even for Digg—while Adelson says that “We’re making money which is the most important thing” (not growth? Hm.), he also notes, “I feel like we’re going to get to profitability” (but he’s not losing sleep over it).
What do you think? Could the content as advertising model work for newspapers or other social sites (*cough*cough*YouTube)? How would you feel if you clicked on content only to discover it was (partially) advertising?
Cup of Joe: The Magic of Sincerity
Here’s a little confession: I am a big fan of magic. I actually took lessons as a kid and continued it as a hobby through high school, and briefly considered it as a career in college. So it’s no surprise that I would be familiar with Steve Fearson. Fearson is one of the magicians that pioneered the downloadable magic business model. In essence Steve sells “information products” about different illusions on his web sites.
A few days ago Steve launched a new product called “Woofle Dust”. In short the illusion shows the magician snorting large amounts of a magic white powder that is supposed to give him new energy/powers. Shortly after sending a brief email out about this new product, Steve began to receive a barrage of criticism. Most accused Steve of promoting drug use to kids.
Most of us in the Marketing/PR world could have seen this coming from a mile away. But fundamentally Steve isn’t considering Marketing or PR when developing a new illusion. His primary goal is to create an illusion that is entertaining. Most magicians at Steve’s level will experiment with different illusions and variants of dialog in order to see what works best. Some of these illusions are real crowd pleasers that can transform a magician’s career, and others are complete disasters waiting to happen. Crowd pleasers are great, because all you have to do is replicate over and over again and you are golden. The real question is what to do when you unknowingly create a complete disaster?
In Steve’s case, he permanently discontinued the product, and then he created a video explaining the full details of the situation. You may not agree with what Steve has to say in the video, but you can tell that every word that comes out of his mouth is sincere.
Sincerity is an integral aspect to creating trust and authenticity. Both of which are vital to developing a brand on the Internet. Without sincere, engaging dialog, companies are at the mercy of the public’s constant wavering trust.
The Truth Shall Set You Free
The reason that we see such a scarcity of sincerity is because to be sincere you have to be honest. And, sometimes the truth hurts. But if your message is sincere and still provides quality content then you will continue to attract the type of audience that is most likely to invest in your hard work. With every illusion that Steve produces there is a little bit of him in the product. It is this unique quality that sets his products apart from his competitors’ and keeps his business authentic and engaging.
Another Media Giant Says Paid Content on the Way
Remember not so long ago when Rupert Murdoch was espousing the future of paid content? It is unavoidable was the cry but there has been not much said since. That is, until Barry Diller stated his version of the story at the Goldman Communacopia conference as reported by the Business Insider. Diller has never been one to pull punches so his assessment of the situation comes as no surprise.
He says “people will pay for things” on the Web and anyone that’s worried about upsetting the Internet community is a fool.
If you look back just eight years, says Diller, you’d see everyone writing off the music business as dead and gone, since all music was going to be free, illegal downloads. Now there’s iTunes a good business with smart pricing, and billions in revenue.
Diller’s contention is that the pricing model for this movement is the key element for unlocking the flood gates. Once that is figured out then all bets are off. There was no prognostication as to how quickly this could take place but there is a “the sooner the better” situation in the online publishing world. We don’t need Mr. Diller to tell us that one.
Of course, there’s so much more to talk about in the online world and Mr. Diller didn’t disappoint. He continues
- There’s no business model for Web video, but he points out that when he suggested pre-rolls for Web video years ago, “it was like a cross to a vampire.” Now they’re everywhere.
- Not a fan of the banner ad. Display ads are just the first stage, there’s a tremendous amount of time to improve.
- Bing is a “good product” but it’s “real foolishness” to challenge Google head-on.
So Pilgrims, what’s your take on Barry’s bits of wisdom? Will you pay for your content that up until now has been free? I for one am a bit baffled by the parallel drawn between music and published content. While I may listen to a song a hundred times I won’t revisit content the same way. A song at less than a buck is a great value. An article at any price? Not so sure. Then again Barry wouldn’t be the first person to call me a fool!
Jim Lanzone: Vengeance in Video?
In January 2008, Ask CEO Jim Lanzone stepped down. He moved to Redpoint Ventures, a VC firm, to be their entrepreneur-in-residence. But his latest project brings him back to search: Clicker, an online TV video search engine. Kinda.
Lanzone is CEO of the video service, which launched yesterday at TechCrunch50 into private beta. Clicker aims to be a TV guide for online video—”the most comprehensive way to find the video content you’re looking for on the web.”
What makes Clicker different from the myriad other video search engines out there? TechCrunch reports:
[Clicker] creates a structured database of programming, organizing shows by things like network, genre, and show name. This type of data not only allows for better search results, but it allows you to browse content without having to do text-based searches, which you probably won’t be doing when television and future web-enabled tablets start to serve up this content. Clicker already has a deal with Boxee.
The goal is really to be the best search engine for video content. Clicker will point you in the direction of whatever you are looking for (and will do embeds if they’re available), but won’t serve up the videos themselves. They will also delve into surfacing content not explicitly produced for television, but is still high quality web video content. But they don’t want to be YouTube, which is cluttered with user-generated content. Clicker is going for a different market.
Clicker will also allow users to edit and submit information about shows wiki-style.
My question: what’s with all those vowels?! Are you sure you didn’t mean “clickr”? Way to shoot yourselves in the foot, guys. 
Naturally, the first real question is what’s their business model. And the answer is typical of search engines: advertising, both search and display. However, they also plan to offer premium accounts, “which the company envisions might be used for storing your favorite videos online, kind of like a DVR of sorts.”
We’re obviously still learning new things about how to do online video all the time, as Hulu has shown us. But is there room for another video search engine—and if so, will Clicker be it? What do you think?
Latest Click Fraud Report Lands on My Desk With a FUD
It’s kind of hard for me to report on Click Forensics without being biased–I’ve long maintained that click fraud will simply be one of many "costs" associated with paid search and is therefore a non-issue. So, you should keep that bias in mind, when reading the following:
Click Forensics’ reports may put them out of business.
Maybe I’m being extreme, but when Click Forensics first launched its Click Fraud Index, it was able to report on massive amounts of click fraud and likely attract many new clients as a result. Four years on, I hardly ever hear anyone–outside of Click Forensics–claim click fraud to be a major issue–and the latest index suggests the same.
For the second straight quarter–and year over year–the click fraud rate declined:
The overall industry average click fraud rate was 12.7%. That’s down from 13.8% for Q1 2009 and from the 16.2% rate reported for Q2 2008.
Of course, that would be bad news for any company that has a business model based on preventing click fraud, so we get some FUD thrown in…
…increasingly sophisticated attacks, such as publisher collusion fraud, continue to be a concern. Ad networks should pay close attention to such threats in the coming months.
The report goes on to suggest that Click Forensics is discovering "new click fraud schemes" such as…
Publisher collusion fraud was one example. This scheme occurs when online publishers use rotating IP-addresses or botnets to click ads on their own sites in order to generate inflated commissions from unprotected ad networks.
Really? You’re just discovering that? That’s been around as long as click fraud itself has. Me thinks you might be grasping at straws (at best) or trying to spread some fear (at worst).
What do you think? Has the click fraud rate really dropped? Has click fraud become more sophisticated and thus more difficult to track?
Let’s hear your own bias! 
(via)
Google Expects YouTube to be Profitable Soon
In its earnings call last night, Google says things are looking up. After a slightly disappointing Q1, Google beat expectations, although its revenue is still growing slowly.
Estimates put net revenue at $4.06B, but Google posted $4.07B, up from $3.89B in Q208 (4.6% growth YOY). Net income for the second quarter was $1.48B, up from $1.25B in Q208 (18.4% growth YOY). Naturally some analysts are disappointed with Google only adding 3% growth over the previous quarter, but considering that Q1 constituted a 3% decline over Q408, it sounds like good news to me.
But even better news: CEO Eric Schmidt says that not only are things turning around (or at least “largely stabilized”), but YouTube will soon enter the realm of profitability. (Or, as one company I worked for optimistically called this, “making the push to cash positive.”)
Senior vice president Jonathan Rosenberg said monetized views on YouTube have more than tripled in the last year. The most popular video website on the Internet will be “a very profitable business for us” in the “not too distant future.”
Also, CFO Patrick Pinchette emphasized that YouTube does have a business model, unlike other Internet startups: “There’s been so much press with all these documentations of massive costs and no business model.”
Another way that Google has been looking to keep the bottom line down? They’ve lost nearly 400 employees in the last three months.
What do you think? Will YouTube soon be profitable, or is Google just trying to make itself look good? Are you disappointed with Google’s slowing growth rate?
