Dog Bites Man. Google Crushes It.

Just landed. Everyone knows Google crushed it again. But the stock seems to be priced already for crushing performance, because it did not pop in after hours. In fact, it dipped.

Seeking Alpha has the transcript of the earnings call. It's really worth a read if you want to geek out - esp. Larry and Sergey's comments on search and advertising, and the Q&A from the analysts.

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:32 PM
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Google Earnings Preview

Google reports earnings today.

Bear Sterns sent me an earnings note which declares:

Strong Paid Search Growth and International Market Share Gain Reaffirm Positive Outlook

· Paid Search Data Indicate Strength for Google. comScore released the December domestic paid search data yesterday. Google.com had 1.27B sponsored clicks in 4Q06, or a YoY growth of 63%. On a sequential basis, Google.com grew sponsored clicks by 22%. We think the solid sponsored clicks data reaffirm our positive outlook for the quarter. We are projecting $2.22B for Google's 4Q06 total net revenues, or a 71.9% YoY and 18.9% Q/Q growth.

I will be on a plane for the earnings call, so I'll ask you all to let me know how it went in comments. I can only imagine another crushing quarter. With the leverage Google has, it strikes me the real danger is knowing when to pull back.

Earnings call webcast will be here.

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:32 AM
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Yahoo's Brand Universe Strategy

I don't get it.

Now, that doesn't mean it's not brilliant. I mean, in 1996, I told my fellow senior managers at Wired that the world didn't need another search engine (we started Hotbot anyway and I'm pretty sure that's the main reason Lycos bout HotWired).

From GigaOm's coverage of Yahoo's media day:

Throughout presentations from the Yahoo Media Group, a part of the new “Audience” division, the key word, uttered more times than we could count, was “promotions.” And so, in both overt and subtle fashion, Yahoo is a company transitioning itself into what’s essentially a marketing platform.....
The most obvious example of Yahoo’s increasing bent towards marketing is its new “Brand Universe” initiative, announced in November. The company will tie together its disjointed properties — such as search, groups, Flickr, Answers, avatars — to lead back to pages about a certain pop culture topic — for instance, Nintendo’s Wii.
..Yahoo says it will launch 100 such pages by year’s end; next up are the Sims, Halo, Lost, the Office, Transformers, and Harry Potter.

It feels off in some way, but exactly how has not struck me yet. Also, the new person who comes in to run the Audience group - a person not yet hired - might not like this idea. Then again, there is something to it that strikes me as an accurate read of today's culture - brands are the new water coolers. Hmmm.

The Yahoo Wii page. More coming soon....

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:25 AM
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Noted: Google's Ongoing Assault on MS Office

From ReadWriteWeb:

On Monday Google released a relatively minor, but useful, feature. It's worth examining a bit more closely, because it's yet another signal that Google is quietly pecking away at Microsoft's lunch in office software. Now I know that Microsoft Office has a lot of advanced functionality that the online office apps don't have, but hear me out...

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:16 AM
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Noted: Digger

I should have a regular roundup of new search startups, but for now, consider it noted: Digger. Release. More on Cnet's investment here.

Update: More on Digger at VentureBeat.

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:14 AM
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Do You Trust Your Government?

Read this. (ZDnet)

The FBI appears to have adopted an invasive Internet surveillance technique that collects far more data on innocent Americans than previously has been disclosed.

Instead of recording only what a particular suspect is doing, agents conducting investigations appear to be assembling the activities of thousands of Internet users at a time into massive databases, according to current and former officials. That database can subsequently be queried for names, e-mail addresses or keywords.

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:46 PM
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Cap'n Ballmer: Search, Full Speed Ahead

Steve Ballmer gives an interview to the FT, the summary is here. From it:

Microsoft’s next big challenge is to address the threat posed by advertising-supported business models such as Google’s, Steve Ballmer, chief executive, signalled on Monday as the software group launched Vista, its new operating system.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Mr Ballmer said that, having focused on the threat posed by open source software over the past few years, the company had now turned its attention to advertising-funded business models.

That means, I presume, that all those Vista engineers have now been tasked to focus on search. Ballmer spend a lot of the interview talking about search. In short: The order has come from the bridge of the aircraft carrier: Turn toward search and advertising models, full steam ahead!

We'll see how the USS Microsoft has fared in three years, when that turn is complete....

• Posted by John Battelle at 4:05 PM
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Thank God For 20% Time

Man, I wish I smoked weed like I used to in graduate school. I'd have a 24-hour party to watch the sunset across the globe on Google Earth. No, really. I mean....wow, man.

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:47 PM
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When Microsoft (and Yahoo) Are Sucking Wind, Is It Fun to Be Google?

When Live Search launched, I was happy to see how the company positioned search as in the early stages of development (sure, they quoted my book, so that helped). But since then, it's been mostly bad news for Live Search. A reader (thanks Michelle) pointed me to this Cnet story. In it, the author describes what most of us already know - that Microsoft has continued to lose search market share, and further, that some analysts believe that the Live brand has confused the public.

"Microsoft's Live branding has been tremendously confusing and has hurt the company, and it is very likely contributing to the situation they are in right now," said David Smith, an analyst at Gartner. "They've created another brand and have not differentiated it."

It's too early to pass "final judgment" on the strategy, Smith said. But now is the time for Microsoft to clearly explain its strategy, he said.

Now, whether or not you agree with this statement (and I have to say, I found the Live brand rather confusing myself when I first encountered it), when a story like this breaks, and folks start commenting on it, it's time to join the conversation. Microsoft is still Microsoft, and I agree with the analyst, the company needs to have a voice responding to this marketplace meme of lackluster performance. Or maybe, just maybe, the launch of Vista will obviate it all? I sure hope that's not the long term strategy.

I think in the end this has to do with the company's massive brand equity in Office and Windows. Consumers totally get what Microsoft means to them - it means the desktop, and it means the main desktop applications they all use (I can say they, I'm a Mac guy, remember?). But when a new brand is launched - "Live" - that trades off Windows ("Windows Live") and Office ("Office Live") but fail to do what those things do online, well, it's not going to work as a brand. Recall when I rather frankly suggested that Microsoft split into two companies? This is why.

I can't believe I am saying this (I was a total Mac partisan in the early 90s Mac vs. PC wars), but I really, really want Microsoft to succeed in search and in Ray Ozzie's vision for service-based applications. I also want Yahoo to shake off its funk, as I've written before. It strikes me as important to have as many innovators as possible in this field, as we are at a very critical moment in the development of this young industry. It's too early for one company to win, and I sense that the folks over at Google would agree with me.

• Posted by John Battelle at 6:58 PM
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YouTube: You Want (Google's) Ads With That?

One of the more news-making moments of last week's Davos event, at least as it relates to our little corner of the world, was Chad Hurley's revelation (BBC) that it would soon be rolling out a system to share revenues with the folks who create its videos (Jarvis has the video). For me, this was sort of a "no shit, Sherlock" moment, I mean, did anyone really expect Google was going to buy YouTube and *not* make ads available inside the core product - the videos themselves?

But the way it was spun really struck me as impressive. Instead of "YouTube to Run Ads," the headlines were "YouTube to Share Revenue With Creators." Well played, my man!

I spoke to Chad briefly at Davos, and I am certain he and the folks at Google are deeply studying the best models to roll out ads on the site. My guess is there will be any number of units available (one might be just three seconds long, he told the BBC), and when folks upload their videos, they'll be presented with a choice of the kind of ads they might want to roll into their video, and also, various placement options (ie, before, after, middle, above (?) etc). There will probably also be some kind of passive AdSense play a la Revvr, and for sure, the more aggressive units will also be some kind of AdSense video mashup, as the company hinted at in this recent post on Google's blog:

Google will support YouTube by providing access to search and monetization platforms and, when/where YouTube launches internationally, to international resources. YouTube co-founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen and the rest of the YouTube team will continue to innovate exciting new ways for people to "broadcast themselves."

Earlier this week, we announced one example of innovation in monetization and distribution with a new AdSense video test. We'll be working with a wide set of content providers, grouping together high quality video content from providers with high quality ads and offering them as playlists which publishers can select from and display on their AdSense sites.

This was not a simple non-sequitor, even if it reads like one (the "innovation" references are not parallel). Google is working hard to figure out how to apply the rules of AdSense - write (algorithms) once, read many (dollars) - to video. There's a massive audience out there, and there's a lot of money to be made "sharing revenues" with it.

Ultimately that audience will determine, through its attention to videos, whether YouTube succeeds or fails at this new ad gambit. After all, producers of high quality video have plenty of options when it comes to hosting content these days, it's cheap, and it's easy. No one has to post content to YouTube, unless of course they want the distribution engine it has become (sound familiar? You don't have to be spidered by Google, either, but who are we kidding here?)

The real question I have is whether, over time, YouTube will require that folks run some kind of advertising in order to gain access to its massive distribution engine. If you want to use YouTube to establish your brand, the way, say, the Coke and Mentos or Ninja guys did, will Google require that you cut them in for using the YouTube platform to do that? Will it ban other kinds of ads, ads competitive to its new units, that creators have inserted into their uploaded videos? What about videos which are, in essence, entirely ads, like the Dove Evolution phenomenon? The Dove folks LOVED that success story, but YouTube didn't make a dime on it( and the agency folks who made the ad aren't quite sure how they'll get paid as well - they usually make money on the media buys, after all). As for denying competitive ads, the precedent is certainly there - AdSense bans competing ad platforms.

Huh. Innaresting. Worth some more thinking, when I'm not jet lagged and posting at 3 AM on a Monday morning. Till then, g'night...

• Posted by John Battelle at 3:05 AM
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Wow. A Reason to Think About Hillary

I have to admit, I'm skeptical about Hillary as a presidential candidate. Why? Well, she kind of rubs me the wrong way, and I'm eager to have a Democrat in office, and I fear that the bad guys (ie Rove) will make mincemeat of her when it comes time to really get down to brass tacks.

But while at Davos I had dinner with a good friend of hers (I can't name names as I don't have permission to do so), and she encouraged me to be open minded. OK, I'll be open minded. So then, I saw this. The original Wired News story:

The issue of digital-era privacy did not make it to the top of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's legislative to-do list at the Saturday launch of her presidential campaign. But for those who look, the New York Democrat has clearly staked out her positions on the esoteric subject, and they're sending electronic civil libertarians' hearts a twitter.

Clinton, the presidential front-runner among Democrats in way-early polling, addressed electronic privacy issues at a constitutional law conference in Washington, D.C. last June. There she unveiled a proposed "Privacy Bill of Rights" that would, among other things, give Americans the right to know what's being done with their personal information, and offer consumers an unprecedented level of control over how that data is used.

Now, those of you who keep track of my rants, know that this is a big issue for me. Huh. I'm listening now...

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:10 PM
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The Best Technology Writing

Pal Steven Levy is hoping you all can help him figure out the best tech writing of 2006 to add to a collection for a book. I've not written a lot of long form stuff this year, as I did mostly interviews for Business 2 and shorter stuff for the site, so I encourage you to find what you love out there and help Steven. But if you feel like logrolling your pal Battelle, I am fond of these: Conversational Media parts one and two.

I know that I owe you all parts three and four, that fact weighs on me each day. I would like nothing more than to write. Sigh.

• Posted by John Battelle at 5:51 PM
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Name That Tune

Neat idea, a search engine that can find music when you hum it. It's called Midomi.

Cnet reports:

Launching in beta mode on Friday (this past week), Midomi allows people to search for a song by singing, humming or whistling a bit of the tune. The site then offers search results that include commercially recorded tracks or versions of the song recorded by others who have used the site. The technology also lets people listen to the exact section of each of the results that matched their voice sample.

(thanks, Scot)

• Posted by John Battelle at 2:40 PM
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While I Was Away...TellMe

TellMe has launched the first step in what may well be a very important new era in mobile search - Tellme by Mobile. TechCrunch covers it here. I got to play with this in early beta, and it is really impressive. A caveat - TellMe is an FM advertiser, and I agreed to give them my unvarnished input as part of TellMe's FM program (they have a feedback forum on the new product, a very good idea, here).

As I opined for three years, I've been waiting for a mobile app that finally uses voice to drive search on the go. This could be it. For now, it's just the equivalent of Yellow Pages 411, but if this works the implications are clear - the underlying voice recogniction technology paired with very smart structured search could be a killer app. It's a little odd getting used to a voice-command-based local search experience, and the system does not always work, but then again, neither does text-based search.

But here's why I think TellMe is well positioned - this java app is carrier independent. Let me say that again - carrier independent. Now that is a breakthrough.

Won't someone like Yahoo or Google just buy Tellme, and swallow it? Could be, but the price will be dear. The company has nine-figure revenues, is profitable, and has a very respected leader in Mike McCue, who I have stayed in touch with for over a decade. Mike has really stayed true to his original vision of voice-driven telephony (you most likely use his stuff if you call information, which I am sure you do). He's seen the ups and downs of the past ten years, and he's built an impressive set of IP assets, including a huge database of phonemes (basic word parts) and related associations. His company is clearly on an IPO track - another thing that makes it unique - and I for one am thrilled for him.

• Posted by John Battelle at 1:47 PM
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China, Premium Ads, Panama, and Miserable Failures (A Round Up)

I'm on the plane home, and I'm punchy. Davos affords you about three to five hours a sleep a night, what with the endless networking events, jet lag, and my general inability to sleep anyway. I may be telling you things you already know, but then again, they bear repeating. This past week, Google and Yahoo did a few things I found interesting.

First, while at Davos, Google's senior management owned up to screwing up in China (I was at the event where this was discussed). I spoke to a very large customer of Google's, who shall remain nameless, who knows the fellow who was tapped to run Google's media business there. That fellow, Johnny Chou, lasted about a year and left in mid December. (Hey, Johnny, if you'd like to talk, you know where I live). Loyal readers will recall my recounting of Google's tortured decision to enter the China market. Clearly this subject continues to haunt the company.

Second, Google made it possible for publishers to carve out "premium" advertising spots on their sites. Does this matter? Well, not much when it comes to CPC advertising, after all, with CPC it's all about performance, and publishers will put ads wherever they perform best. But when it come to branding and CPM ads, placement is *everything.* Watch this space, literally. Google is priming its publisher network for a major push into branded, site specific sales. That's where the big money is, the non direct-response money that is moving from TV and print.

Third, Yahoo announced earnings, which were not very interesting (they met estimates and then lowered expectations. Kinda like a blind date your Mom might have set you up on). But more interestingly, they announced Panama would be ready a full month early (though they emphasized that would have no effect on earnings whatsoever). Still and all, that's a good sign. Yahoo is well and truly positioned to be the comeback kid this year. That's not to say it will happen, but...

And lastly, Google released a new algo that helps kill Google Bombs. Sigh, no more miserable failure. Well, it's not much fun to kick a fellow when he's down anyway. From Google's post on the subject:

The next natural question to ask is "Why doesn't Google just edit these search results by hand?" To answer that, you need to know a little bit about how Google works. When we're faced with a bad search result or a relevance problem, our first instinct is to look for an automatic way to solve the problem instead of trying to fix a particular search by hand.

Recall, of course, what Google has said previously (NYT) about Google Bombs: Craig Silverstein, Google's director for technology, says the company sees nothing wrong with the public using its search engine this way. No user is hurt, he said, because there is no clearly legitimate site for "miserable failure" being pushed aside.

Moreover, he said, Google's results were taking stock of the range of opinions that are expressed online. "We just reflect the opinion on the Web,'' he said, "for better or worse."

• Posted by John Battelle at 5:59 AM
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Google v. Second Life? No Contest

One of the big buzzy facts of Davos life this year was Second Life. Reuters was busy interviewing folks for the Second Life audience (yeah, OK, I did it), and nearly everyone at Davos who was NOT in the internet industry was busy talking it up as important (and many who were as well, but for different and deeper reasons).

Now, another buzzy fact of Davos life was Google. Eric Schmidt co-chaired the event this year (they select a few industry leaders to do so), and Larry and Sergey plyed the floors like regular folk (well, regular folk with a 767 and billions in net worth, but at least at this event, they were not the only ones).

This led someone to ask me - will Google, with Sketchup now firmly part of the empire, take a run at Second Life? And will it win?

Others are also asking this question (TechCrunch, Benchmark partner Michael Eisenberg). But I think it's the wrong question. Second Life is all about play, and fantasy, and alternative realities. I'm going to guess that Google's version is going to be all about reality, and mashing up AdWords, Google Earth, Sketchup, and the Yellow Pages/Google Local. The two will live quite nicely one next to the other, and most folks who use one will probably not see using the other as even vaguely competitive.

• Posted by John Battelle at 2:03 AM
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Scoble to MSFT: Buy Krugle

Fascinating:

I keep hearing about Krugle from developers. They tell me it rocks for looking up stuff. Need shopping cart code? Search for it on Krugle. Now compare that to Google/Yahoo/MSN.

Now, I can hear you now “developers don’t matter to search engines.”

Oh, yeah? When I visit Google there’s a huge plasma screen that shows every Google search done in real-time (it only shows that a search was done, not what the search was about). Everytime I look at that screen Redmond, WA does more Google searches than most other large cities in the world and does more Google searches than the entire continent of Africa.

Hint: there’s not much in Redmond except for Microsoft. So, what are all those Microsofties doing on Google?

Previous coverage.

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:54 AM
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Google Integrates YouTube Into Google Video

Hate to say I tol' ya so but...from an email from Google PR:

Google's strength -- and its history -- is grounded in search and in innovating technologies to make more information more available and accessible. YouTube, meanwhile, excels at being a leading content destination with a dynamic community of users who create, watch and share videos worldwide.

Google search results already include links to content that's hosted on YouTube. Starting today, YouTube video results will appear in the Google Video search index: when users click on YouTube thumbnails, they will be taken to YouTube.com to experience the videos. Over time, Google Video will become even more comprehensive as it evolves into a service where users can search for the world's online video content, irrespective of where it may be hosted.

The screen shot at left show a search for Ninja videos, the top link is a YouTube hosted episode. The url:

http://video.google.com/url?vidurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DOEmss2lg-ug&docid=4055962825990929128&ev=v&esrc=sr1&usg=AL29H23MropJLXK1wakFId20-r3MdlOmTw

From my predictions post:
3. Google will integrate YouTube into its main services. YouTube will be promoted via the "video" tab on Google's home page. YouTube will keeps its name and domain, but the business/sales end will be interchangeable.

• Posted by John Battelle at 4:58 AM
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The Bummer Of Davos...

Is that nearly every session I attended where I got that unmistakable "Shit I have to post on this" feeling was, unfortunately, off the record. Last night Larry and Sergey sat down with Charlie Rose for an intimate chat at a private event. Off the record. Before that I spoke to a room full of Media Governors - the folks who run just about every major media company in the world. Off the record. Before that, a gathering of influential editors and journalists from all over the globe. Again, off the record.

You'll have to trust me that the insights, conversations, and information I gathered will certainly inform the musings I post here. I just can't be specific to the who, what, and where. Stay tuned...

UPDATE: Lots of comments take me and the WEF to task, and I need to clarify. Most of Davos was in fact on the record, I was noting that the stuff where I found the most insights tended to be off the record. And I am investigating whether some of what I heard was in fact subject to looser "Chatham House" rules where just the speaker cannot be identified. Overall, I do defend the practice of getting leaders together from time to time in an off the record environment, it allows them to share experiences openly and learn from them. I will be posting more thoughts on all of this over the coming week.

• Posted by John Battelle at 4:52 AM
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Reed to Launch B2B Vertical Search Portal

Reed Business Information is launching business-to-business vertical search portal.

Reed is using proprietary categorization, entity extraction and taxonomy management software from Teragram, provider of multilingual natural language processing technologies. The software automatically organizes content from hundreds of Internet sites into a vertical search engine.

• Posted by Melanie Colburn at 8:43 PM
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A Few Questions For Joe Kraus

Joe Kraus, a co-founder of Excite (image credit), recently sold his latest company, JotSpot, to Google. I’ve known Joe for quite some time, and thought a quick email interview might be in order given his long history in search and Internet media. (Joe introduced JotSpot at the Web2.0 conference two years ago.)

Did Google buy JotSpot, or your team? If the former, what is the plan for the company? If the latter, what's the plan for the team?

Simply put, I think Google bought both the technology and the team. In *most* acquisitions, you are acquiring both and ascribing value to both.

Google has invested substantially in collaboration (Groups, Docs&Spreadsheets, Google Apps for your Domain) and JotSpot is a part of that trend. In my opinion the first wave of productivity apps (seen in the 80s) was about making an individual more productive. Word, Excel, Powerpoint were all about making me, as a worker at my desk, able to create more work per unit of time. But, I think we've eeked out the last bit of individual productivity gain at this stage. I mean, does the new ribbon on MS Word make me more productive as an individual? Probably not. It's a great interface, but it's unlikely that there is a massive gain in personal productivity.

This next wave that we're in is about productivity gains achieved NOT by making the individual more productive, but by making groups more productive. The massive penetration of email means that we're in touch with one another like never before and dependent on teams like never before. That means that there is a huge opportunity for productivity gains through more effective collaboration. That's what Google is trying to do in their efforts and that's the theme in which the JotSpot acquisition fits.

I can't talk specifically about product plans, but I hope that the above gives you a general sense of direction.

It does, thanks.
Now, personally, isn't it kind of a mixed emotion joining Google? I recall a conversation earlier - 2004 or so - in which you expressed some reservations at the giddy growth and presumptive optimism of the place. I think like many of us you felt perhaps Google was due a needed, well, life lesson, one that you learned at Excite, and I learned at The Standard. What say you now to such sentiments?

Well, I have to say that I think "the rumors are true". Google has collected the smartest group of people I've ever encountered under one roof.

In terms of emotion, you know, it's an understandable question, but honestly, there's no mixed emotion -- I'm honestly just excited to be here. I think that comes from two things -- more than the former founder of Excite, I was most recently fully occupied as the CEO of JotSpot. I had 28 employees that were working very hard, who had given up other very good opportunities and and for whom I wanted a great outcome. There's no better outcome than to be at Google (it's a wonderful nerd paradise -- a place that nerds like me can thrive in) and there is great satisfaction in that. Second, I left excite 6 years ago, and at a personal level, my life has gotten a lot more rich and fullfilled from a variety of sources -- marriage, kid, non-profit work (as well as my for-profit work). So, it's not that I don't love my work and feel very passionately about it -- it's just that I'm not defined by it the way I was when I was in my 20s.

What can you do at Google that you can't do outside of Google? And a follow up, what can't you do at Google that you "gave up" to be there?

What can I do at Google that I can't do outside of this place? I think there is a lot here, but the short answer is the pretty obvious one. Google operates at a scale that startups don't approach. And, while that provides its own challenges (making sure your stuff can handle high numbers of users), it provides a ton of opportunities to get your ideas exposed to a large number of people and get a large amount of feedback. Also, if you are pursuing very forward-looking ideas then a larger company like Google provides staying power in the market. There's that old adage in startups "being early is the same as being wrong". In a startup, if you're too early for the market, it feels like there is no market at all. It's hard in a startup to really tell the difference between early and wrong and in most cases it leads to startup death. Google is a place where there is strong interest in the long term and that is a very unique thing.

Thanks Joe!!

• Posted by John Battelle at 12:58 PM
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Searchmob Roundup

PodZinger's 2006 Top Search Terms

Google Blacklist - Security Flaws Revealed

meebo's Growth Expands Rapidly, $9 Million in Venture Capital

Wikipedia Adds NOFOLLOW as a Result of an SEO Contest

When Yahoo Considered Acquiring Google & Other Tidbits

• Posted by Melanie Colburn at 7:51 PM
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Your Sponsored Search History

Very interesting, noted on SEL: Gogole now includes paid links you've clicked on as part of your search history.

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:18 AM
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Davos

Every couple of years I am invited to the World Economic Forum at Davos, and even better, they give me a reason to come - an honor, or a club to join, or some such. This year I was invited onto a media council and am moderating or sitting on panels on Beyond Web 2, Privacy, the Future of Talent, and more. I'm very pleased that some of the folks at the WEF came to our Web 2 conference last year and were inspired to start the WEF "bloggregator" - part of an ongoing effort to open up the WEF to all comers. Jeff Jarvis, Arianna Huffington, and many others are involved. Check it out.

And I hope to be posting on my experiences there, though having been before, I'll admit it's quite a trip, and it's not always easy to stop and get perspective while on the merry go round. I'll do my best.

If anyone reading this is going, please do let me know in comments or via email. Thanks!

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:18 PM
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Yahoo In The Crosshairs

Catching up on stuff I've missed last week...The Wired piece, and the response to it, strikes me as perfect for Yahoo - it really can't get much worse. The bar has been lowered. Now jump over it, folks.... I mean, you have the resources. The brand. The technology. The good will. Go. Do. It.

Update - Wired posted Yahoo's response to the piece, and Henry adds some thoughts.

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:46 PM
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NYT: No, No, NO!!!

The approach the NYT takes, editorially, to describing "user generated content" (what I prefer to call Conversational Media) is so dismissive, so backhanded, it makes me want to scream. Here's how Richard Siklos defines it in today's paper (the piece is entitled "Big Media’s Crush on Social Networking").

User-generated content is basically anything someone puts on the Web that is not created for overtly commercial purposes; it is often in response to something professionally created, or is derivative of it. So, it could be a blog, a message board, a homemade video on YouTube, or a customer’s book review on Amazon.com.

Richard and his editors so deeply want to believe that conversational media is dependent on "professionally created" media. But it's not, any more than it's "not created for overtly commercial purposes."

Certainly, conversational media will comment on packaged goods media, and lord knows the reverse is certainly true these days (The Times is the biggest commentator of them all, it can't get enough of covering this space.) But there are so many examples of great conversational media that is both commercially driven and entirely independent of "professional media" (in our industry alone, there's Om, there's Matt, there's Mike, there...and, and, and....), that making such a sweeping statement seems either ignorant or simply wishful thinking. Harumph.

• Posted by John Battelle at 4:56 PM
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Prepping For Competition

Google's Adsense service is totally dominant in the marketplace. Yahoo's YPN - so far anyway - has proven feeble, and Microsoft's AdCenter has failed to move out of early stages. Game over? Hardly. Hardly at all. Both these major players are going to push hard in 2007 to win in syndicated paid results, and then there's Ask, AOL, and many others who have intentions in this space. Not to mention all the other folks who hope to out-Google the leader - from Tacoda to Quigo, and back again.

So, with that in mind, Google is shoring up its defenses. Laying down some new rules while it can, so to speak. What am I talking about? Well, nothing less than this:

Competitive Ads and Services

In order to prevent user confusion, we do not permit Google ads or search boxes to be published on websites that also contain other ads or services formatted to use the same layout and colors as the Google ads or search boxes on that site. Although you may sell ads directly on your site, it is your responsibility to ensure these ads cannot be confused with Google ads.

Google has "updated" its Adsense policies, the above is new. The industry is noticing, trust me (though apparently, there's some upside to this too). And do you remember this debate? Uh huh. Thought you did.

But wait, isn't the blue, green, and black on white approach, well, pretty much diluted by now? Isn't the way Google displays text ads, well, isn't that so industry standard as to be, well, indefensible?

Good question. Watch this space. I am guessing Yahoo and Microsoft are. One thing I do know. Most folks who surf the Internet care not at all about this. Which is why it's such a Big Deal.

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:50 PM
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Searchmob Roundup

GenieKnows.com is Awarded $2 Million for Personalized Local Search

Introducing BrightSale.co.uk - Estate Agency 2.0

Focused Searching on the Most Popular Searches

New Content Added to EarthTrends Database

New GPO Federal Depository Library Offers First-Ever Digital Collection of Civil Rights Documents

• Posted by Melanie Colburn at 4:24 PM
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A Few Questions for Dave Morgan, Founder Tacoda

Dave founded Tacoda, a behavioral ad network, six years ago now, and recently inked a deal to add Comscore demographic information to Tacoda's network. Tacoda is an FM partner, so read with that caveat, but I found our email back and forth interesting, and hope you do too.

Like Tacoda recently did, Google incorporated Comscore some time ago. Why is yours better?

Because TACODA is capturing and can target ads against anonymous browsing behaviors from more than 15 Billion page views per day on 4500 of the top news, entertainment and information sites on the web, from NYTimes.com to MSNBC.com to Orbitz WSJ.com to FM Publishing. This gives TACODA the broadest, deepest and most diverse database of user content browsing anywhere - more than Google or Yahoo! - though they certainly have a lot more search data.

By matching this browsing data to anonymous ComScore data, we now know not only what content they surf, but marketer sites they are visiting online and what e-commerce categories they are buying online. Since we can associate this with time, we can see users much higher up the purchase funnel than search marketing. We can see the users when they are still in the brand consideration phase. By the time that users get to Google, like yellow pages offline, they generally already know what they are going to buy, it's just a matter of price and vendor.

Will there be any change in how you charge for this?

We sell on a CPM basis only, since our efforts are focused on brand and branded response advertisers – folks that care who sees their ads and where they see them – rather than direct response. We see video as a big part of this future, whether it is on the computer, of IP-driven television or on mobile devices. Nothing beats sight, sound and motion for delivering brand advertising.

Given that you sell on CPM, but are a network, don't advertisers still want to buy site by site? Will you ever get into that business, or do you think all the behavioral and demographic data obviates site-specific selling?

I expect advertisers to buy both behavioral networks and site-by-site in their media mix. They buy individual sites for the strong, integrated branding opportunities, but they have to live with limited inventory and premium prices. Buying behavioral is a nice complement to that. With TACODA’s behavioral network, they get the audiences that they want on clean, well-lit sites. They get a lot of scale. They get lower prices. However, it will never replace site=specific selling. When someone wants a Wall Street Journal reader or a Boing Boing reader, the only place that they can be certain to reach them, and the only way to fully-leverage the sponsorship value of a great publisher brand, is to buy it site-specific.

As a behavioral network, I do not expect TACODA to get into the site-by-site selling business. It is much better served by direct or specialized sales forces working on behalf of the sites. We are focused on selling people, not pages. When advertisers want to talk to certain types of people, TACODA will be there. When they want to their messages on certain kinds of pages, that will be for other sales organizations.

So how is business at Tacoda? Can you give us a sense of your scale in terms of revenue and margins?

TACODA is doing great. As a private company, we don’t release specific numbers on our revenue or margins, but I can tell you that our last quarter’s revenue was up several hundred percent year over year, our margins are strong and growing, and our team has grown from 25 or so a year ago to more than 90 today, thanks in large part to the work of Curt Viebranz our CEO, who was our COO for the past two years and was the former CEO of HBO International and Time Inc. New Media. Over the past year, our publisher network has grown by 10X as have the number of marketers and agencies that advertise on our network. 2007 is starting out very well and we expect the strong growth to continue.

Can you be more specific on the size of the publisher network?

TACODA’s network today has more than 4500 branded content publishers – folks NYTImes.com, Dow Jones/WSJ.com, Orbitz, Cars.com, NBC, Tribune, BusinessWeek.com, Technorati and FM Publishing. These sites deliver 15-20 Billion page views per month to an unduplicated US audience of more than 140 million unique visitors and deliver real-time anonymous content browsing behaviors to TACODA’s servers with virtually every page and person that they serve. Since TACODA’s market focus is brand advertising, not performance and direct response, its advertiser customer base is quite different than other online ad networks. Among its top advertisers in Q4 were Coke, Snapple, American Express, FAO Schwartz

In your estimation, what are the hurdles/gates in the online advertising business right now?

Advertisers need more scale and less friction and there is a looming shortage of quality inventory at cost-effective prices. If General Motors wanted to appreciably increase their online ad spend this year, they would have a tough time doing it economically and efficiently. All of the substantial auto content sites are largely sold out for 2007. Search usage is growing, but not nearly at the rate that online ad spend is increasing, and the rates for the best search terms are already pretty high. The vast majority of web pages viewed every month – probably 80% of them – can’t currently support premium advertising. They either lack an intuitive and valuable commercial context – they have news, social, email, photo and video sharing content, not technology, travel, cars or health – or they have unsuitable content. Unfortunately, these non-premium content pages are growing much faster than the premium pages. The majority of ad view growth on the web in 2006 was in social and photo and video sharing. Finally, while the “sight, sound and motion” of video advertising on the web certainly offers an attractive vision for the future, it is going to take years for it to truly come to fruition.

Any other thoughts for 2007?

I think that the big online ad stories in 2007 will be brand dollars, targeting and scale. This should play very well for all networks, but particularly those that they serve the needs of brand advertisers – who care about who sees their ads and where they see them. I think that we are going to see a lot of attention, and a lot of money, flow to sites further down the food chain than those few that have dominated this sector historically. The really big guys will do fine, but the mid-size and smaller folks will do even better.

Thanks, Dave!

• Posted by John Battelle at 11:25 AM
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Google, The Eternal Media Question

Friend or foe? The media industry's struggle with this question is its defining story. Here's another beat in the ongoing drama, a Hollywood Reporter interview with Google's VP of content partnerships, David Eun. It seems clear to me that Google is trying hard to position itself as a friend, a non-threatening friend, to the content industry.

From it:

The Hollywood Reporter: A company of Google's size is going to invite controversy. Do you think the company is misunderstood?

David Eun: Yes, but not by everyone. I think there's a lot of questions, but if you take a step back, we're an 8-year-old company. So we're still very young. Things move quickly for Google as well as the space that we're in. So when you get into a space like content, and you come at it from a technology perspective, I think what we haven't focused on as much -- and this is something I'm trying to do -- is really explain in (plain) English what it is we aspire to do and what frankly our objectives are. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your perspective, there's a lot of noise out there about us trying to get into certain businesses or having designs to do X, Y and Z.

Eun is a key player in this. Prior to joining Google, he lived in the belly of the beast: Chief of Staff for the Media & Communications Group at Time Warner. His job is to explain Google's intentions in the media/advertising space. He seems quite articulate and clearly experienced. But something he says here make no sense to me. He says:

THR: How much of the TV advertising business does Google aspire to take?

Eun: We paid out over $780 million last quarter alone to the Web sites we've asked to