If It Ain’t Broken, Why Innovate?

 

This article, entitled “TV isn't broken, so why fix it?” (link) appeared on CNN this past week. I have to say, I fundamentally disagree with almost everything about it.

The primary idea that I have an issue with is that because TV (and are we talking about the device or the delivery format?) isn’t completely without utility or appeal, no one should be trying to improve it. What if Kennedy had looked at the moon and said, “Hey, no one has ever been up there, so why should we go?”

Seriously though, I find it hard to believe that a guy writing a ‘Business Insider’ piece for CNN’s Technology segment could be so opposed to progress and innovation. The companies he takes shots at for trying to improve the consumer experience with their televisions? Apple, Google, and Microsoft. Those are some pretty good track records when it comes to developing new and popular ways to interact with technology, and I would imagine that one of them could very well strike upon the key to the next stage in TV evolution.

In criticizing their past attempts to innovate in the space is his second majorly flawed position (after “maintain the status quo”), which is basically, “if these companies have failed to achieve this breakthrough in the past, they should just quit trying.” Really? Once again, this doesn’t feel like someone who should be writing about business or technology.

Then the piece meanders for a bit while the author goes back and forth between talking about TVs as a piece of technology and TV as a service provided by cable companies without recognizing the distinction, followed by some unsubstantiated assumptions about TV consumers and some weak anecdotal or hunch-based evidence.

“But I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that most TV viewers simply won't care enough about any of this stuff to shell out $1,500 for a new Apple TV, or spend a few hundred bucks and countless hours fiddling around adding a new box to their TV set and figuring out how it works.”

Oh yeah? Those being the same people who waited in long lines to pay $400 for a slightly newer version of a cell phone they already had? Why am I picturing the guy who wrote this as an 80-year old man whose grandkids have to constantly set his VCR clock?

“But normal people don't think about TV that way. TV is passive. The last thing we want to do is work at it.”

What defines “normal people?” How do you know what they think about TV? More importantly, what have you seen in the last few years that doesn’t suggest that people are looking for more control, more personalization, and more interactivity?

Perhaps the biggest fallacy at all is that TV hasn’t already been revolutionized several times in recent memory. To him the massive old box upon which he enjoyed black and white westerns as a child is somehow closely related to the HD plasma flat-screen which is currently streaming Netflix via an HDMI connection from my laptop. A year or two ago I was setting recordings weeks in advance so that I could watch my favorite shows after I returned from vacation, and skip the commercials while I was at it. I no longer adjust the rabbit ears when my picture is blurry, and the channel options went from 14 to 1,400 in my lifetime.

“That's why we love TV just the way it is. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.”

If people had said that 20 years ago, I would consider TV extremely broken. Speaking as a marketer, I do actually find a lot of problems with television, but even as a viewer I would be happy to see change. As it is, there is much room for improvement, and while lack of imagination may be something that the author suffers from, I’m glad that there are people in the industry who don’t share that narrow-mindedness.

As soon as I calm down enough to climb off this soapbox, I will submit my resume to CNN. It seems like they are in desperate need of some technology writers.

Google Is Not Shaking Things Up as Much as We Thought

::NEWS FLASH::

I just received this emergency telegram from my high-level sources at Google:

"Matthew

AdWords blog was unclear -(stop)-
Rumors abound in POVs and the blogosphere about reduced ad inventory -(stop)- 
We plan to show the same number of 1st page ads as before -(stop)-
If 6 ads would appear in the right-side rail, they will not move to the bottom -(stop)-
CPCs should therefore not increase -(stop)-

Please stop calling us every ten minutes -(stop)-
Seriously stop -(stop)-

-Deep Throat"

So my previous take on this, and a number of POVs that agencies have already made public and sent to clients, appear to have been a little hasty.

The Google employee I spoke to seemed unaware of the industry's first take on this change, but seemed to understand how this could be misconstrued given the brevity of the announcement on the AdWords blog, as well as their general lack of transparency on exactly how and why ads would be shifting around.

Scooped!

Google is Shaking Things Up (Again)

What's missing in this picture? (Hint: paid ads on the right side)

The big news for advertisers to come from Google lately (and yes, I am ignoring the organic algorithm change for right now) is that they are changing where paid ads are going to appear on the search results page.  For all of the claims that Google is a power-hungry, money grubbing monster, I have to say that as an advertiser, I don’t generally see that being the case.  In fact, I am normally frustrated by things they do in order to improve the user experience because they run contrary to what I would like as a marketer.  This latest decision, to move paid ads from the right-hand rail to the bottom of the page is no different.

The first issue that we have to consider is user behavior.  Thanks to eye-mapping technology (they plop users down in a chair, tell them to navigate the search page, and have a camera mounted on top of the monitor to track their eye movement as they look around the page; not clear if they hold the lids open Clockwork Orange-style), studies have been done telling us how people actually view the SERP (search engine results page).  Combined with click data on the various links, we have a pretty good idea of how users see and interact with the search engine results, and as Google has changed the layout and result types that show up, user behavior has changed as well:

SEOmoz studied the effect of Local & Expanded Sitelinks

Basically, what we have seen in the past is that most people tend to view the page top-to-bottom, and only occasionally do their eyes wander over to the margin, unless it is a relevant part of the answer to their query (like a map or a video).  Thus, Google feels that putting those paid ads that don’t make it into the prime top-of-page slots will actually be better served at the end of the organic results, due to the natural progression of users through the listings.

I know that for organic results there is some basis for this, as listings in positions 9-10 often actually have a better click through rate than those in positions 7-8.  The idea is that we tend to gloss over the middle results, paying the most attention at the beginning, and then at the end when we are forced to decide to either click on something on the first page, or make the (increasingly rare) decision to see if page 2 of the results will have something more to our liking.

Google thinks that CTR will increase at the bottom of the page compared to the right rail, but we will see.

The other issue is a purely mathematical one for advertisers.  Where you once had 6-8 paid search results on a page, it will not be uncommon to only have 4 results, which is what I tend to see now when I get these search result layouts.  Two on top, two on bottom.  Now, if there are fewer first-page ads available, then simple supply & demand tells us that competition, and thus cost per click, is going to go up. 

Google is not saying that 2^nd page ads are going to see improved performance, so this is strictly a cut in inventory.  Everyone wants to be on the first page, so get ready to see your CPCs go up (and presumably CPA as well, all other things being equal). 

Now, I have already heard the argument that this is Google’s way to make more money from ad revenue.  Higher CPC = more fees for Google, right?  Probably not.  Think about it how much CPCs would have to increase in order for them to make up for the revenue lost by having their total first page ad inventory drop by as much as 50%.  If anything, Google is most likely costing themselves money, because people who find that their bids have moved their ads to the second page are just as likely to pause the keywords as they are to increase the amount they will pay for them.

I don’t love this change as an advertiser, but it is once again going to be hard to argue that it isn’t better for the user.

Crowd-source This Contest!

UPDATE:  The prize is an Amazon gift certificate.  Minimum of 10 people have to enter in order to trigger a prize.  Seriously, that's a low threshold, if you enter you basically have a 10% chance, since I doubt more than 10 people will.  However, that is an incentive for those of you in marketing to spread this on Twitter or Facebook or LinkedIn, so that your marketing peers will contribute and trigger the prize!

Further, 10 entries makes it a $25 prize, but the value will increase with the number of entries, so spread the word!

Ok, so let's pretend that I only have $100 with which to advertise on Google.  What would be your approach to maximizing this tiny budget in paid search?  Day parting?  Only run on one highly relevant keyword?  Conversely, run on a bunch of really cheap, long-tail keywords?  You have all dealt with budget issues, so take your solutions to their logical extreme!

Remember, this is Google only, so if your advice is to blow it all on Facebook ads, it will not be actionable.

Get creative.  Leave a comment.

Here's the kicker (I just came up with it): Contest!  Best response wins a real-life prize.*

*when I figure out the prize, I will update this post.  Also "best" is going to be ill-defined, but like pornography, I will know it when I see it.

Google+ : What's Their Angle?

With Google+ finally rolled out to the general public and membership reaching 40 million users, the question becomes not whether it will be successful, but has it already peaked?  We know that brand profiles will be available soon, but beyond that what offerings are on the horizon to make this social network a daily destination, rather than a set-and-forget option in your Gmail account settings?  What is Google really after here?

Their search engine, the bread and butter of the Google empire, still holds around 60% of the market share, with the rest carved up between Yahoo and Bing, and to a lesser degree Ask.com and AOL.  You have to figure that if Google could get their social service to take a similar 30% bite out of Facebook, they would be absolutely thrilled.  Are they likely to do that though?  How many people do you know who have signed up for Google+ and stopped using Facebook?  Right now it seems more like a curiosity than a platform that people are going to move over to full time.

Normally to make a new market entrance like this really successful you want to have some integration in order to take the burden off of the user.  As of now, one of the main complaints that you will hear about Google+ isn’t that the features aren’t attractive, but simply that the initial set-up is work, and more importantly, work that the users have already done on Facebook.  Inertia is a powerful force, and people don’t like having to do the same thing twice.  If you could import your friend list, copy all of your “likes” as ”+1s,” and port your privacy settings over, it might be more attractive, but there is no way that this unholy marriage will ever be consummated.

Which brings us back to the question of, “what is Google’s” long-term strategy here?”  Are they simply looking to get users to spend time on another of their properties so that they will have space for a few display ads? 

In marketing, Facebook ads are certainly something that people are paying for, though the results have been mixed and there is still relatively little information provided in terms of on-site metrics.  Measuring the success of a FB buy is difficult, and the question of whether to direct users to a brand site versus a profile page remains unanswered, depending on the goal of the campaign and whether one platform or the other holds some sort of unique user experience like a contest or a promotional giveaway.  The advantage to Facebook ads is almost entirely in the demographic targeting that is available, which makes sense given how much personal information people include in their profiles.

Still, to make that attractive as a marketing feature, you need a certain critical mass both in terms of the number of users (since for any given company/product you are only targeting a narrow slice of the consumers), as well as the time that they spend on the network per day (since they won’t see many ads if they just log in and log out).  Google+ has nowhere near that volume yet, and won’t soon, as they are still below 10% of the membership that Facebook has.

The “hangout” real-time meeting function offers a bit more interest and utility, and is certainly an offer that is distinct from anything that Facebook does, but it is a very limited engagement option, and it isn’t a hub that people will spend hours logged into every day.  As a multimedia tool it is appealing, but not necessarily a draw to the casual social networking user.

Really, you have to figure that for Google the goal here is just to be able to collect more user data, and be able to connect it to the vast archive of data that they have already.  Imagine if you could marry the personal information that users put in their Facebook profile, to the detailed search logs that are created when those users look things up in Google.  The dossier that Google will be able to produce on 50-100 million users will be so detailed and in-depth that the retargeting (and regular targeting) options will be incredible.  Having not only demographic information to target your consumers with, but also an explicit search history will allow an even greater level of ad relevance than Facebook can offer now (which is why people wonder why they haven’t gotten into the search game yet).

Taking this one step further though, I wonder if what we are seeing won’t lead back to Google TV.  Remember that idea?  When your television was going to become your main point of contact with the internet as well?  I wonder if they are not setting themselves up for an incredible targeted TV buy application in the future. 

Think about it:  The real problem with television advertising has always been a lack of targeting capability.  You can show during certain times or on certain networks when you think your targeting audience will be watching, but other than that you are just blasting your message out into the world and hoping you hit something.  It is the shotgun approach to marketing, and not very efficient.

But imagine if your consumers have Google TV.  They are logged into their profile to see if they have any messages from friends (or maybe they just finished a “hangout” using the built in webcam, or a partnership with Microsoft and their Kinect hardware), then that runs in the background while they watch television. 

Suddenly, Mountain Dew wants to buy an ad, and Google can say to them, “we will show your TV spot only to males, aged 14-32, who have listed an interest in mountain biking, extreme sports, computer games, programming, soda, rock music, Doritos, or whatever else, based on their Google+ profiles.  You pay based on the available impressions that we can give you at whatever time, so if it is 8 pm. on a Thursday and there are 2.4 million people who fit the criteria that you set up, we will deliver you TV spot to all of them, and only them, for $XXXX.”

Think of the revolution in advertising that could take place if Google can just get people to be logged into the device that they watch TV on.  Suddenly, most of the inefficiency of TV buys disappears, and Google has a massive back-door entrance to a marketplace that they have only recently established a toe-hold in.  How this would need to be structured with the networks is another thing, but as more and more media is consumed on YouTube, Netflix, and Hulu even that problem becomes more manageable.

Google doesn’t have to fight Facebook, they just have to play in the space long enough to gather the user data that they need.  How does this not make sense?  If it isn’t Google’s plan, it should be.  More specific targeting is the trend in the advertising world, and this is a way to bring search-level relevance to the massive budget world of TV, with Google in prime position to lead the charge, if they can only put all of the pieces together.

This may only be a wild theory today, but check back in a few years.  I will take wagers.