Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

Pilgrim’s Picks for June 24

Posted: 24 Jun 2008 09:50 AM CDT

No funny videos for today’s Picks. Just good, wholesome internet marketing news. In fact, did you know that consuming one serving of Pilgrim’s Picks daily will make you, well, you know…more regular? :-)

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Just Like Global Warming, Google’s New Ad Planner is Not a Real Threat Either…Not!

Posted: 24 Jun 2008 09:24 AM CDT

I wonder how many people in the interactive advertising industry are feeling suckered by Google this morning.

For the past few years, Google has continually downplayed its threat to ad agencies and marketing technology companies. “We’re not a threat, we just want to help,” tends to be the main theme.

Meanwhile, Google continues to gradually creep forward with its encroachment. Like the rising seas, its advancement is often unnoticed until, all of a sudden, we’re ten feet under water.

OK, the headline. I’ve not forgotten the point of this post. Google today announced Google Ad Planner, a free research tool that will help “connect advertisers with publishers.”

When using Google Ad Planner, simply enter demographics and sites associated with your target audience, and the tool will return information about sites (both on and off the Google content network) that your audience is likely to visit. You can drill down further to get more detail like demographics and related searches for a particular site, or you can get aggregate statistics for the sites you’ve added to your media plan.

First, let me make it clear. I think this is a pretty cool and useful tool, and I can’t wait to get my hands on it. However, how many existing companies do you think will be hurt by such a powerful–and free–tool that, if not cutting out the ad middle man, certainly undermines the offerings of companies such as comScore, Nielsen Online and Quantcast?

My last observation here. How smart of Google to announce Google Trends for Web Sites last week, ahead of this announcement? The two are clearly using the same database of information. However, with the Google Trends announcement, we all applauded the usefulness of the free tool. Little did we know that Google was simply buttering us up for its evil real plan–take over the world of ad measurement and planning.

BTW, ignore that wet sensation you feel behind your ears. Just like the seas are not really rising, Google’s not really a threat either. ;-)

(image source)

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Nokia Acquires Symbian, Ready to Battle iPhone and Android

Posted: 24 Jun 2008 09:03 AM CDT

Yesterday’s news that Nokia acquired location based social network Plazes, was worthy only of making our Pilgrim’s Picks. Today’s news that Nokia has acquired mobile platform Symbian–and plans to make it open source–is definitely worthy of its own post.

Nokia already owned 48% of Symbian, but is willing to pay around $410 million in cash to acquire the remaining 52%.

So, what’s Nokia’s plan for Symbian?

Nokia on Tuesday also said it and other mobile phone makers such as Motorola, Inc , LG, Samsung and Sony Ericsson along with operators AT&T, NTT DoCoMo, Vodafone Group  and chipmakers Texas Instruments and STMicroelectronics have formed the non-profit Symbian foundation to drive innovation in mobile services.

Nokia will contribute Symbian and its S60 software assets to the foundation, while other members will put in their UIQ and MOAP software to create a new joint Symbian platform in 2009.

OK, but what’s Nokia’s real plan?

Oh I see. Well Nokia’s real plan is likely to get a head start on Google’s delayed Android, while also giving Apple’s iPhone something to think about. With cutting edge phone hardware–99.999% of Silicon Valley owns a Nokia (or at least Robert Scoble does)–combined with Symbian’s software, Nokia will make sure the mobile phone industry is not a one horse race.

Google to Start-ups: “We’ll show you ours, if you let us steal yours”

Posted: 24 Jun 2008 08:49 AM CDT

If LimitNone LLC wins the lawsuit it just filed against Google, it could send a warning signal to other start-ups: don’t show Google your wares, because it will steal your technology out from under you.

That’s effectively what LimitNone is saying, with its lawsuit alleging Google stole its system for migrating Microsoft Outlook customers to Gmail.

The case details LimitNone’s meetings starting in March 2007 with Google to build a tool it called "gMove" for moving the e-mail, address books and calendars of corporate customers from Microsoft Corp’s Outlook into Gmail. The suit alleges Google had trouble building a similar tool.

LimitNone said it entered a confidentiality deal with Google to share trade secrets of its e-mail migration tool with Google engineers, sales people and key Google Apps customers.

Last December, the firm of less than five employees learned from Google that it planned to enter the market for LimitNone’s migration product itself because the business opportunity promised to be huge, according to court papers.

LimitNone calculates its lost revenue at $950 million. Thus far, Google’s keeping quiet–so we don’t know its side of the story.

The tough part will be convincing a judge that Google’s own "Email Uploader" is a direct rip-off of LimitNone’s solution–I mean, how proprietary can it be to move contacts from Outlook to Gmail?

Still, LimitNone’s lead attorney is the same guy who represented American Blinds trademark case–which was dropped when the company could no longer afford legal fees–so we know he’s not afraid to keep attacking Google until his client runs out of money! ;-)

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The News in Brief, June 23

Posted: 23 Jun 2008 03:21 PM CDT

Either I’m really running high on the productivity scale or it’s a really slow news day. Knowing me, it ain’t my productivity. So here are the select few stories that weren’t quite worth a post, but are worth a look:

Revaluing Social Networks: TechCrunch looks at another way to assign valuations to social networks. He’s calculated the average Internet ad spend per user in each country, then multiplied that out by the number of users for each social network in each country (where data is available, of course).

Who comes out on top? MySpace, of course, though their lead over Facebook in dollar terms depends on which recent deal in social networking you base the index on. And the country with the highest ad spend per user? The UK ($213), followed by Australia ($148) and Denmark ($144) (then the US with $132).

Holistic Fox: Eric Enge delivers another great interview, this time with Vanessa Fox on holistic Internet marketing. They cover everything from designing your website to leveraging social networks to providing value to your customers in web copy—and real service.

USA Today Covers SEO: For once, mainstream media may have found a good way to cover SEO: ask Matt Cutts. While the five tips in the article just touch on the basics, it’s probably a pretty decent first-blush introduction to an industry that most people haven’t really heard of (and if they had, it’s probably not in a good way). via

IAC Offshoots Inbreeding: The old IAC is splitting into five companies, but they’re not quite ready to sever all ties. IAC is building an ad network to interlink the sites of the five new businesses’ constituents. Their USP is slated to be their targeted audience(s).

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