TGI Friday

Just another difficult day in the online world. We are getting more and more clients on board and this is really good news, but it also means I am spending lot of time preparing material and forecasting campaigns.

I do not complain I have a lot going on and I can only work properly when I feel some kind of pressure. My current projects are also really different from one another, I have a big Adwords campaign coming so I spent part of the day creating a keyword list that I will later optimise, I only need to write a few ads and I will be ready to roll, I really am excited it will be my first fully managed campaign I cannot wait. If you have any tips please share, I would be grateful.

Other big project on my list is a comparison shopping engine initiative I want to run in Europe, legal is taking ages to agree on the contract but those guys are doing the best they can and they have loads to do already.
I am also building forecasts on this initiative as I first want to find out how much it is going to cost vs the extra revenue generated, well nothing new here I am pretty good with numbers and love playing with them.

Google strike back!

Loads of Google news these days, those guys are the most creative and business savvy people I read about. A bit like Dell and Microsoft in the good old years of the IT revolution.
You will be surprised by how many books you will find on the shelves around the Google revolution in the near future.

So yesterday’s announcement was not really a surprise either, Google wants to rival Ebay by launching its own payment platform (codename Gbuy), GOOD FOR THEM! With the exponential growth of Froogle this new feature is welcome.

Google checkout (real name), is primarly aimed at Adwords users, it enables usres once logged to pay for transactions online with your credit card number (stored on your profile). So far Paypal can sleep tight as the competition is only partial, but no doubt Google will make Google checkout universal in no time.

Why are they doing this?
- Keep the share holders happy
- They’re so bored they want to do something more exciting than playing with algorithms
- or more seriously they want to rival with Ebay as an auction site  or MS Market place as a Mega platform. Any bets welcome

Where is Google going to stop?

I got this email from my manager the other day ” Not sure if you are all aware of the latest beta out of Google – CPA (cost per action) based advertising.” as a forum freak I was aware of the fact and already had some initial thoughts about the all thing.
To me it was the next logical step for Google.
Search affiliates represent between 35 and 80% of affiliate business depending on the network. In the UK only affiliation should generate £1.2 billion revenue by the end of 2006, so of course Google wants a part of the pie. They will advertise it to their users and advertisers best interest. CPA is the most “secure” way to avoid traffic fraud and abuse, of course you can still place an order under a false credit card number or cancel the order as soon as it’s placed but we can agree it is going to be more difficult to be dishonest and earn fraudulous money.On the other hand if everyone is pushing CPA, it will be really hard in the nearest future to push Brand recognition on line, plus some brands are using search to make indirect sales so the model should be teamed up with a cost per call function.Plus all merchants do not have a “sales driven” website so “affiliates” will be tired of driving traffic to non converting sites.This initiative is aimed at “killing” affiliate networks and if handled properly Google can be really successful at this as we could also think of them proposing tutorials, workshops, roundtables ect.. around how to drive search affiliate marketing and how to make the most out of it.On the merchant side, “Google Affiliate” and “Google Analytics” can be used together to understand the purchase path and behaviour of their customers.

It will also “force” genuine affiliate networks to empower their non search affiliates and come back to what affiliation marketing was about to start with, find creative ways to generate sales and get commission. In the last 3 years they all been “winging” about growing dependency on search but none of them actually did something about it.

Question is, how successful it will be amongst affiliates themselves? Affiliates do not see Google as a partner but they cannot avoid it, it is a love/hate relationship, they love the money but hate the model (no transparency, rules are changing all the time, blacklisting, some merchants are breaking the rules without being punished but smaller merchants are strictly monitored…), the vast majority of affiliates may not like the fact that 90% of the business is in the hand of Google and must abide Google rules. So far Google is only beta testing it so we do not know how successful the program will be. A good idea does not always equate market share gain, it will take Google a couple of years to close the gap with CJ, TD and alike.

-PPC: If Google is pushing CPA, they will have to think about an hybrid model, small amount per click and big amount per sale, otherwise they will not attract any affiliates.
-Affiliation: To be honest have Google to manage paid search affiliates will ease affiliation management as Google would monitor rule breakers and select affiliates according to their potential earnings. Affiliate networks will also concentrate on recruiting more non search affiliates. They would also lower their cost to keep their existing clients and as Google may offer consultancy as part of their package (at the end of the day they need to offer more if they want to compete), affiliate networks will have to adapt.
It would be interesting to know what will be said about it in the next affiliate summit in Orlando.