Praveen: SEO, SEM, Online Marketing

Google has acquired DoubleClick for $3.1bn, Double click is an Ad company working with Advertisers and Publishers in Ad business. They developed a DART product respectively for Advertisers and Publishers to help target and manage campaigns to meet their respective goals.

Google is already a leader in Targeted Advertising both Text Ad/Image Ad display. They have great products such as Adwords & Adsense for Advertisers & Publishers respectively; this technology is for anybody and requires little or no human involvement from Google’s end.

The main question is why did Google Acquire DoubleClick? Some of the reasons I can think for are:

1) Google took inspiration from Overture to build an Ad system to display relevant text ads based on search terms. They built a system and revolutionized it in a big way. Now they might be thinking of repeating the history again with DoubleClick. DoubleClick has DART, which Google might want to make it enormously scalable for anybody to just plug and play. They might want to keep the human intervention to the minimum level and let technology work the maximum, mainly to reduce cost which ultimately benefits the end user.

2) The Ad business is growing at a rapid rate, with internet overtaking Radio and competing with Print. Ad Agency business is really on the rise. Google wants to have a share of that pie too. It not just wants to be a medium to offer and manage inventory, they would also want to actively work with advertisers and publishers to meet their end goals & take major share of the pie.

3) Most Agencies managing Ad business apart from few good ones do not have long term satisfied customers. Most companies are looking for more accountability and reliability from Agencies. Google is more trusted than anyone in the online industry.

4) Google being the leader in the Online Ad selling; its move towards vertical integration is very natural.

Google would be using its technological expertise in combination with DoubleClick’s business acumen & client servicing capabilities to reach it goals.

Yahoo has in acquired Right Media to be able to compete evenly with Google.com. To state another interesting acquisition is Google acquiring Performics, since Performics is a part of DoubleClick. Performics is a company that sells SEO services to its clients. So, formally Google has acquired a SEO Company, I am sure its business would increase whether Google actually supports it or not.

What will Google do with Performics is yet to be seen….

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Online Marketing Industry is very new compared to other industries including Information technology and Software development. People working in this industry especially successful people have some unique characteristics vis-à-vis other industries. Some of the qualities unique to the people working in this field are:

1) Innovative Skills: Believe it or not this is the industry which basically runs on innovation & new ideas. Every innovation can help a company grow only till it is widely followed and copied by everybody else.

a. This industry is an IP intensive industry, IP (intellectual property) is the key asset to any company operating in this industry. Here companies do not have inventory or physical assets; it thrives and grows by knowledge pool and talent of its people.

b. Therefore people who can think out of the box is essential in this industry.

c. The best example is Google & Yahoo; both the companies have a place in history only because they created great products for end users. They are popular not because of advertising or marketing, but because of the popularity of their innovative products.

2) Knowledge Skills: Technical know-how and methodology of working is very essential in this industry. The ever changing new trends in technology make it imperative for professionals working in this field to have latest knowledge to have technological advantage over others. For example Web 2.0, AJAX etc..

3) Marketing Skills: To efficiently market your online products with ROI oriented approach is very essential for your business. Deciding the right mix of media and external communication is the essential job of any online marketing individual. Manage, Monitor & constantly optimize campaigns to drive right traffic to the website and efficiently monetize it are the important skills needed for the individual.

The above qualities are some of the main qualities a person must have working in an online industry. However the most important aspect is to understand and believe in the overall vision of the company, the bigger picture which the company aims to reach. Consider the below example:

Compare a scenario where a person is walking today, tomorrow he starts to walk faster, 3rd day he starts to Jog, 4^th day he starts to run faster. Similarly there is another person who is walking today, 2^nd day he cycles, 3^rd day he moves in a two wheeler, 4^th day he drives a car. In the second case the person has grown while as in first case the person is in the same state but operating faster. Companies and individuals are also same. Most companies tend to operate in the same fashion but more efficiently as they progress, such companies were good in the traditional industries such as banking and finance however in online industries which are IP intensive they would soon die. The real growth happens to companies which follow the second path by moving up the value chain and not just offering a customer a better product but also to create a whole new set of customer base

Marketing, Knowledge & Other skills can make you No.1 in the game, but you need Vision, Innovation, out of the box thinking to Lift the Game to different level. Google was able to think Big, which clearly the other players lacked, this is the main reason why Google is in leadership position and is able to define the game.

Most online companies follow the traditional businesses and follow the Method 1 explained above. They have an idea, implement it, become successful and then want to become efficient in repeating it. They run out of innovation and startup spirit to create new things. They become busy implementing the same idea everywhere they go, even though the whole world has copied it. This is exactly Yahoo has been doing until recently they changed the organization structure to think differently.

But Google has been following the second path, they started thinking bigger and broader. They ventured into Radio, Newspaper, TV, and whole lot of acquisitions.

They bought Youtube, DoubleClick, partnered with myspace and other major online players.

This is the main reason why Google surpassed Microsoft to be the No.1 Brand in the world is less than decade of time, which Microsoft took almost 25 years to build it.

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Alexa & comScore

In present day online industry there are numerous players such as companies, agencies, individuals, consultants & others who are coming up with innovative ideas technical as well as commercial in the online medium to make an impact to the end user’s life.

However, the one area where the online industry is lacking & the community needs to put its act together is creating a strong, robust, reliable, widely accepted analytic system which gives the both the end user as well as the community a benchmark to measure & evaluate the effectiveness of a website in the online market.

The presently available tools such as Alexa and comScore are both unreliable as sometimes it is found that they contradict each other while rating a website

There are numerous instances where Alexa and comScore ratings have been doubted by various people:

1) Matt Cutts on Alexa
2) Peter Norvig on Alexa
3) Business Blogs on Alexa
4) WebmasterWorld on Alexa
5) Alexa can be injurious to your wealth
6) Can you trust Alexa?

The point is the main motive behind installing an alexa toolbar is to drive up the ratings. The comscore figures are also seen are far away from the real numbers.

With use of new technologies such as AJAX, calculation of page views becomes even more complicated for the analytical tools.

My belief is there is enough room for any new company to enter and provide real value to end user, companies & other players in the online industry.

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Recently spotted was an Text Ad on sponsoed listings of Google Search results. The Ad was from Futurebazar.com, with not a single character in english or any other language. All characters in title, description line 1 & 2 were in small box.

FutureBazar Ad on Google.com

The Google Search for the exact characters would give me the results :

I really wonder how Google approved these Text Ads on their network.

The same Ads are found in Sify.com as well.

Another interesting thing is Google is able to index and spider content on Sponsored listings displayed through Adsense. This means that Google can read Javascript which is otherwise understood to be totally unreadable by Google’s robots..

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There has been in a surge in new advertising agencies in India especially in past 2 years. The number has increased to more than 100%, primarily targeting overseas clientèle as well big Indian companies. Due to low cost factor or other reasons most online marketing agencies outsource their projects to India, being one of the largest English speaking young populations.

Many online marketing agencies & companies abroad find it advantageous to outsource their work to other agencies and companies in India. This is possible mainly in online industry where geographic location is of slight importance

Agencies in India target 3 main entities for business.

A) Agency client, typically another agency abroad looking to reduce its cost of operations by outsourcing part or entire amount of work to agencies in India. This is profitable for agencies as they only have to manage the client while the backend operations are taken care of by outsourcing partner.

B) Companies: These are primary advertisers who are looking to advertise across various channels across online media. They would be totally willing to outsource their work to agencies here in India, but since physical presence matters while negotiating deals, the agencies in India have difficulty in closing deals with big companies. But companies which are active online are aware of methods of outsourcing their online work to agencies worldwide. These agencies may have experience in the past or are aware of channels like forums and sites where people selling services can be contacted.

There are also companies in India who are interested in online marketing arena. These companies need to be convinced of the ROI on investing online. However most big companies are aware of online industry growth and advantageous of advertising.

SEO SEM Agencies

In the online marketing industry the services offered by agencies are performed in a predefined set of processes. Every service is offered in phases like:

Phase 1: Analysis

Phase 2: Activities 1

Phase 3: Activities 2 etc…

The agencies assign an account manager or a client representative who is in constant touch with the client regarding updates and changes etc. This client representative would be dealing with numerous clients of that agency. The agencies provide you a standard set of reports and documents sent at regular intervals of the campaign.

The agencies mainly have clientele who are unaware of technicalities and knowledge of the industry, the campaign management activities cannot be performed by them due to lack of expertise or necessary resources.

However the most important thing to be noted is that the agencies have very little knowledge of the business of the client. The company which runs the business knows exactly who its target audience is and what their needs are hence would be able to reach them with the right communication. This is especially true in B2B marketing on search networks. Another aspect is maintaining the ROI, the company self managing the campaign would have all records of sales as well as cost of advertising to help maintain the advertising costs/expenditure

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