Will Twitter Ads Be 140 Characters or Less?
Well folks it looks like the days of advertising free tweeting may finally be coming to an end. The rumors are flying around regarding the ad platform that Twitter has in the works and is testing. Everyone is “atwitter” with this change and for good reason. Of course, until there is more than what has already been released by Twitter itself any ideas / thoughts about what Twitter ads might look like are for the imagination.
MediaPost reports on how this whole thing really started to bubble to the surface.
Twitter plans to launch an advertising platform in about a month, according to Seth Goldstein. The chief executive officer and co-founder of socialmedia.com led a panel Monday focused on the next wave of interactive advertising at the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting 2010 in Carlsbad, Calif., that shed light on Twitter’s strategy.
Declining to confirm exactly when Twitter would release the platform, Anamitra Banerji, head of product management and monetization at Twitter, told MediaPost following the panel that “we are working on an ad platform, but it’s only in the test phase.”
So while Seth Goldstein picked up some pub for being the “unofficial” press release of sorts for this next phase of Twitter it is probably too early to speculate on when this will be less talk and more reality. In the meantime let’s see what people are or have been putting out there. The Washington Post reminded us of Robert Scoble’s idea of the SuperTweet he introduced back in November
Robert Scoble, for instance, suggests the idea of a SuperTweet with all sorts of metadata that pops up when part of the message is rolled over with your mouse. This data could include things such as the location of the Tweet and how many times it’s been retweeted, but it could also trigger a contextual ad triggered by certain keywords.
Other questions that need to be considered on how will these ads be paid for. Will there be an AdSense type platform for Twitter users to share in the wealth? Where will the ads appear if they are not in the stream? The list goes on and on.
What are your thoughts on Twitter ads? Are you looking forward to seeing them? Will they impact your Twitter experience? Do you have a particular format that might or might not work for you? Why not join in on the speculation and guessing. Your guess is as valid as the next guy’s right now.
Google Buzz? MSFT, Yahoo Say ‘Been There, Done That’
The dust is still settling on Google’s PR blitz today over Google Buzz, but that hasn’t stopped both Microsoft and Yahoo from speaking up. Their message is simple: been there, done that.
Dharmesh Mehta, Director of Product Management for Windows Live, shared this statement with Search Engine Land this afternoon:
Busy people don’t want another social network, [...]
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Chrome Extensions Include Ad Blockers
Google must know something that we don’t. Why else would they be SO open in their new move toward transparency as to allow for extensions on Chrome that, gulp, block the very lifeblood of their money printing operation? Well, considering the market share that Chrome currently has (around 40 million users) and the mindset of someone likely to use (or even know about) this extension the thought of this kind of ‘allowance’ is probably bigger than the reality.
In a manifesto-like e-mail message sent last month to all Google employees, Jonathan Rosenberg, a senior vice president for product management, told them to commit to greater transparency and open industry standards. Rather than hoard knowledge to exploit it, he wrote in “The Meaning of Open,” share it and watch Google and the entire Internet prosper.
The resulting openness is allowing for ad blockers as extensions but this decision did not happen without a Mountain View trip to the revenue mountaintop for advice.
Speaking at a conference on Dec. 11 in Mountain View, Calif., Linus Upson, engineering director at Google, said there were many discussions before allowing ad-blocking programs “because Google makes all of its money from advertising.”
But he explained that the prevailing thinking was that “it’s unlikely ad blockers are going to get to the level where they imperil the advertising market, because if advertising is so annoying that a large segment of the population wants to block it, then advertising should get less annoying.”
“So I think the market will sort this out,” he said. “At least that is the bet we made when we opened the extension gallery and didn’t have any policy against ad-blockers.”
That was a long quote but it’s the last sentence that was uttered by a company that is both loved and scorned at the same time. This is uttered by a company that some would think anti-trust is in their future in the same way it was for Microsoft and IBM. Letting the market sort it out is the only way to go in the long run. Sure there will be hiccups but the alternative (some form of regulation that reads real well but in practical use is just plain stupid) is not going to work. I think that there is enough evidence from 2009 for that one.
Similar extensions are currently available on Firefox, which has a much larger market share but has not exactly stopped Google in its tracks so that may be the evidence needed.
Oh and if you want to gain access to these blockers here’s their stories and a link or two for you.
As it happens, two 28-year-olds, Michael Gundlach, an independent programmer from outside Athens, Ga., and Tom Joseph, an M.D.-Ph.D. student at Mount Sinai Medical School, separately went through the exact same experience. In telephone interviews, each told of excitedly looking to see if he could install a Chrome extension of his favorite Firefox add-on, Adblock Plus, which prevents ads from appearing on Web sites, whether bright flashing animation or the text ads that Google serves up after a search.
They did not find one. So, naturally, each spent a day or so creating a rough version of such an extension, with much more work to come. AdThwart from Mr. Joseph is now No. 2 in popularity among the more than 1,200 Chrome extensions; AdBlock from Mr. Gundlach is No. 8. Together, they already have more than 120,000 users.
Happy ad blocking!
Google AdWords To Step Up Account Disabling & Improve Communication Process
Back in October I reported on Google mass banning AdWords advertisers, unfortunately then, the feedback from Google on the reason was very limited. Today, I spoke with Nick Fox, Google’s Business Product Management Director for AdWords, about new changes taking place today and tomorrow related to advertiser bans.
Starting tonight, Google will begin permanently banning [...]
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Google Displays More Power
Continuing to make sure that everyone knows that whatever Google does in the online world is for the greater good, the company has announced its DoubleClick Ad Exchange on the Official Google Blog. Neal Mohan, Vice President of Product Management posts the explanation of how Google is going to make the online advertising world better for everyone (how neighborly of them 
) and in the process continue to make the world a better place to live and do business.
The post gives a significant run-up to the overview of the new service. By likening the current display ad inventory situation to having planes flying with a lot of empty seats (I used to love that! I’ll take those three seats for sprawl any day) Mohan makes sure we know that the space is crying for a service like the Double Click Ad Exchange. Here’s the gist of it
We believe that a better system built on better technology can help grow the display advertising pie and benefit everyone.
Three principles underpin our approach to the display advertising field:
1. Simplify the system for buying and selling display ads: For example, our DoubleClick ad serving products help advertisers and publishers manage campaigns and ad formats across thousands of websites and from thousands of advertisers.
2. Deliver better performance that advertisers and agencies can measure: We’re building a host of new features to help advertisers to run display ad campaigns across the Google Content Network (comprising hundreds of thousands of AdSense partner sites) and on YouTube. We’re also developing better measurement and reporting technology so they can figure out what’s working and what’s not.
3. Open up the ecosystem: We want to democratize access to display advertising and make it accessible and open, like search advertising. We recently launched the Display Ad Builder to help businesses easily set up and run display ad campaigns. 80% of advertisers who use that product have never run a display ad campaign before.
AdWords and AdSense advertisers will be able to access the exchange through their existing interfaces so this transition will be as seamless as possible and fully leverage the existing network of advertisers that Google has right out of the gate. Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO, has always contended that as the search market’s growth has slowed that some of the best prospects for expansion lie in this market.
If you would like to see some more info from the source then the Double Click blog will give you more official insights. In addition the New York Times and paidContent all have posted their takes on this development.
Of course the bottom line is that Google’s reach is continuing to grow and that can either be a source of great concern for some and celebration for others. Either way it sure looks like it’s not stopping any time soon.
More Video Coming to Google Search Ads
Back in March 2008, we first saw video live in Google search ads. However, eighteen months later, video ads are still scarce in the SERPs. But maybe Google’s rethinking that, according to a Reuters report about a conference call yesterday.
Google is looking at changes in their search ads:
“Our search ads have largely looked the same over the course of the past seven or eight years,” said Nick Fox, a Google director of product management, referring to the text ads that appear alongside Google’s search results.
Fox detailed various ways that Google is striving to liven up the ads. In August, he said, Google introduced a feature that allows advertisers to highlight multiple links to different products or brands within a search ad.
Fox also mentioned a few advertisers using video today: the remake of Fame and the latest Tiger Woods video game. Google expects more and more ads to feature images and video, as we’ve predicted and reported.
Perhaps most interestingly, Google also discussed the future of search ads on mobile devices, albeit obliquely:
The company also said it was developing features to make search ads more relevant on Internet-enabled cell phones, but did not provide details about where mobile ad revenue fits into the overall picture at Google.
“Mobile for Google been a small but very fast-growing segment that we think is going to be an important part of our monetization and search story going forward,” said Susan Wojcicki, Google vice president of product management.
They also mentioned the recent changes in bidding, campaign management, and the search engine itself.
What do you think? What changes are you most excited about in Google ads? How many image and video ads have you noticed—and are you ready for more?
Coming Soon: Paid Search Without Keywords
Lately, there’s been a lot of talk about search without keywords. Recently, the topic came up again at SES San Jose in a keynote presentation from Nick Fox, Google’s business product management director for AdWords. In the presentation, Nick outlined where paid search could be in the next 5 to 10 years and covered two [...]
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Must …. Watch …. More …. YouTube …. Videos….
Are you a YouTube junkie? Apparently there are a lot of them out there. According to a Wall Street Journal Digits article and comScore there over 100 million YouTube users in the US that average watching 68 videos per month. Wow. I certainly keep that average down but I suppose watching just over 2 videos a day, every day of the month is reasonable. I prefer to think of it as a little lame (don’t people have something better to do?) but that is just my opinion.
So if you are YouTube what would your next move be? Of course they are working on the advertising and further monetization model. What goes hand in hand with that though is figuring out a way to make that average number of videos watched increase so more ads can be served and more money can be made. Makes sense but how to do it?
Today, YouTube takes a fairly rudimentary approach to surfacing new videos. Watch one video about Van Halen and YouTube will recommend a dozen other similar clips featuring the rock band. But “at some point you don’t want to see any more Van Halen videos,” said Hunter Walk, a director of product management at YouTube. “You get Van Halen fatigue.”
So Walk and his team are now trying to figure out how to find new topics to engage users, a process he calls “manufacturing spontaneity.” The “serendipity of YouTube,” he said, is to show people a “selection of videos you didn’t intend to see but are very compatible. I didn’t come here to watch this. But somehow I find myself watching 10 videos about topic blah.”
First, how Van Halen fatigue is possible is the start of whole other debate but don’t you feel real good about a product manager that uses the terminology referring to your valuable time as “watching 10 videos on topic blah”?
The example given in the article about some connections that YouTube might make based on your viewing history (thank you Google for allowing us to be tracked and categorized by you every step of the way) shows there may be some flaws in the process. The suggestion is made that maybe someone watching the Van Halen video might want to see something about scuba diving. Huh? Sure, Van Halen released an album (yes an album) called “Diver Down” back in the 80’s but saying that someone watching a Van Halen video related to that is interested in actual scuba diving is pretty funny. Considering the likelihood of this video watcher’s lung capacity being severely compromised due to other habits formed from being a Van Halen fan and the fact that they are probably just reminiscing about the good old days etc, etc, well you get the picture.
Apparently early experiments with various techniques are showing promise, though. I wonder if Google is in cahoots with the diet industry since it seems hell bent on developing more people spending time in front a screen rather than say, actually walking?
YouTube is rolling out other discovery mechanisms too, including personalized recommendations based on viewing history. And it implemented a feature Google recently launched for its Web search, called the wonder wheel, which suggests different topical “spokes” related to the content a person is searching for.
In a separate interview, YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley said the site is also working on tools that allows people to discover videos being watched by their friends and co-workers.
So how many YouTube are you watching? Would you like more suggestions to show you even more? Are you meeting your RDVA (Recommended Daily Video Allowance) of about 2 videos per day every day of your life or do you actually have other things to do?
Google Jumps On2 Video Compression; Sends Google Radio into a WideOrbit
I wouldn’t hold your breath, but there’s a chance we’ll soon see the end of pixelated videos on YouTube. Google has today announced the acquisition of On2 Technologies and its portfolio of video compression technology. The $106.5 million deal could signal that we’ll soon see better compression technology used at YouTube– which means those videos that look great on your desktop, will still look great when they get to YouTube.
“Today video is an essential part of the web experience, and we believe high-quality video compression technology should be a part of the web platform,” said Sundar Pichai, Vice President, Product Management, Google in a statement. “We are committed to innovation in video quality on the web, and we believe that On2’s team and technology will help us further that goal.”
But wait! We’re in a recession, how can Google afford to pay $106 million for compression technology? Easy! It just offloaded the remnants of its failed Google Radio division to software firm WideOrbit. According to TechCrunch:
WideOrbit is taking over several assets of Google’s radio business, namely Google Radio Automation, Maestro and SS32 automation products. The company, which is backed by at least $34.5 million in venture capital, commented on the closing of the deal saying that it was looking to expand its product portfolio and taking over Google Radio’s assets was a key step in that process.
So to recap: video is still hot, radio, not so much.
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Gmail and Google Apps Leave Beta
Yes, it’s true. Just five short years after its launch, and just months after they caught the most recent round of flak for the extended “testing” period, Gmail is finally losing the Beta label today, as are all of Google Apps, including Calendar, Docs, and Talk.
Oddly enough, the list of unbetaed apps coincides exactly with the list of betaed apps TechCrunch was complaining about in May. But as the NY Times reports, there’s more to it than just TC’s criticism:
Practically speaking, the change will mean precious little to Gmail’s millions of users. But it could help Google’s efforts to get the paid version of its package of applications, which includes Gmail, Calendar, Docs and other products, adopted inside big companies. Corporate technology managers tend to shy away from beta products, and Google wants to remove any barriers to adoption that it can.
“For business customers, it is an important sign in terms of the maturity of our product offering and commitment to this business,” [a Google director of product management, Matt] Glotzbach said. “I’ve had C.I.O.s tell me that they would not consider a product labeled ‘beta.’”
Gmail anticipates some “gamma anxiety,” so they’ve added a new experiment to labs—to add back the little gray “BETA” to your Gmail logo. (And we all know how they like their silly lab apps!)
What do you think? Will dropping the Beta label help Google gain enterprise acceptance? Will you add the beta back your Gmail, just so you can continue to ridicule its half-decade in beta?
(Hat-tip)
