This
article came so close to being about the positive results
recently released for online ad spending. I read several
other pieces, and couldn’t help but think, “So what?”
Whether strong growth or none, the vast majority of our day
to day jobs remain the same. Very few of us in the direct
marketing space can rest any easier because online ad
spending as a whole has increased. As I have pined about
before, we work hard for our money. More money being spent
doesn’t make our jobs any easier. We will at some point in
time benefit, just not now. Positive reports on the industry
encourage more, new advertisers to spend online. When those
advertisers go through the learning curve and understand the
value of CPA, then we benefit. In technology they have
Moore’s law for describing the relationship between time and
number of transistors. We don’t have anything quite like
that, but we should have something that describes the
relationship between time and advertiser adoption of CPA.
https://www.lynxtrack.com/signup.php
I will
be content in the meantime with holding my head a little
higher when I say that I work in online advertising and
spend the rest of the article talking about one of my other
favorite topics, Google. Whenever I think of Google, I
picture this small company somewhere up in Canada, a
rotation of four to six guys working out of a dorm room,
motivated to stay inside and be productive because of the
harsh Quebec winter and rampant French influence. Turns out
my picture couldn’t be further from the truth, eh. Far from
being the little engine that could, Google wields power like
a turn of the 20th century Rockefeller. J.P.
Morgan’s name still lives on as an integral part of a large
corporation, but many others of his generation have not
fared as well. When you are a Google, what then do you do to
maintain the momentum and position you have through timing
and hard work obtained?
One thing Google has done
extraordinarily well is to avoid being labeled and
predictable. We may call them a search engine, but they have
never operated like one. Were they to have thought
themselves simply a search engine, they would have gone the
way of Excite, Lycos, and AltaVista. Instead, they continue
to pioneer, leading the way in image search, and an all
automated news content aggregation site among other things.
Clicking on their “Google Labs” link feels like stepping
inside the famed MIT Media Lab, home to so many of the
things that you and I will only hear about five years from
now. Google has also kept us on our toes by purchasing
companies that weren’t obvious targets such as Blogger.com
and Picasa. Given their reach and influence, I am surprised
that more people don’t routinely compare them to Microsoft.
A great brand, best-of-breed software, and a clean almost
cult like desire to do good make Google special but don’t
guarantee them the type of competitive advantage that a
Microsoft has.
At some point in time, both
Ford and GM dominated the auto market, owning more than 50%
market share. Google is the Toyota of the auto-world – the
newcomer that rose to unexpected heights without drawing too
much attention to itself in the process. At some point in
time, these companies go from upstart to target. Google’s
success, attributed in no small part to their search engine,
made them a target by showing the power and attractiveness
of their main market. They now must find a way to continue
to make inroads while under pressure. Luckily, most of us
won’t face this exact scenario of having to worry about
Microsoft investing billions of dollars to push us out of
first place. We can, however, learn from this as we will
experience the same pressures on a smaller scale. Each time
we create a market and show the viability of a particular
message or channel, it invites competition, often from those
with more resources and/or strengths than we possess.
When we succeed, we force the spotlight to shine on us and
no longer enjoy “don’t worry about me” status.
Yahoo has done what many in
its position couldn’t. Google stands a good chance of doing
the same and joining Amazon.com, eBay/PayPal, and Expedia as
companies that rose to the top and have held onto their
positions as leaders and innovators. What will Google do? A
few articles have speculated that Google’s next play will be
a web browser. Do they need to create one to stay around? It
certainly would satisfy a lot of people who want a viable
alternative to IE, and it provides a neat wrapper that could
integrate all the components they currently offer – email,
search, blogging, image search, and photo storage. Whether a
browser is the answer, Google needs to entrench itself in
the online user experience and go beyond being another good
brand to integral component of its audiences’ lives. Most of
us won’t be the next Google, but chances are their struggle
can, as mentioned, help us elevate our games to the next
level and do better under pressure.
