Google is Becoming Syndication Squared
Important Details: It’s tough to keep up with the announcements churning off the Google PR conveyor belt – and to pick out the ones that have larger implications among those that are really just small "beta" tests that may not amount to much.
The recent Google/Viacom announcement is one of those to pay attention to.
This Google/Viacom deal isn’t just about testing “
It’s about all those things, of course. But for Google, it’s in part about this: evolving as a leading syndicator of our time. As we recently pointed out, in a post titled "Google Deals Continue" on Aug. 10, Google is maturing in its relationships with the Viacoms and MySpaces of the world, "moving from rookie to pro in the arena of public companies and global markets."
That maturation points to a front-and-center role in syndication. And that’s huge, as the Web creates the biggest Stuff In/Stuff Out market – a world of increasingly fungible content – we’ve ever seen. Google is the leader in syndicating advertising, with its pay-per-click business. Now it is moving into syndicating news and information video content.
Ad Syndication. News Syndication. Syndication squared, with obvious economics of scale and relationship that will only build further over time.
How did it get there, and is it going as a premium syndicator?
First, Google built a better search engine, catching the wave and building a massive audience. Then, it stumbled on the re-born Overture pay-per-click model, and as Yahoo! acquired Overture, it built its own paid search, on the foundation of acquisition and development. And it has iterated on top of it, to claim pre-eminent positions in both free and paid search.
Over that time, it has built its relationships with advertisers. First, with the advertisers that no one wanted – the merchants that the newspapers and broadcasters figured were too small even to call on and that the Yellow Pages companies took for granted. Its pay-for-performance, self-serve model has spread like wildfire, with the contagion quickly moving up-forest to medium- and larger-sized advertisers. All we have are unofficial numbers, but we believe that Google now has relationships with more than a quarter-million businesses.
With all those Google-contracted advertisers, Google needed even more page views than it could generate on its own. Its AdSense network then signed up sites of all kinds willing to provide a home to the now-ubiquitous "Ad by Google" contextual ad tower, in exchange for a piece of the action. Of course, many of those sites signing up have been content-creator sites – broadcasters and news publishers.
So, back to the Viacom deal and to syndication more generally.
What can it syndicate?
Well, how about content and advertising of any type anyone can dream up.
It’s got the relationships with many of the key content players and many of the key advertisers. So to the text content players, it says, we can provide you with those towers of text ads, and now we can provide you with video ads. In fact, hey, how would you like some video in addition, MTV video to start, and, did we tell you, there are ads in those videos and you get a piece of those too.
To the video content players, the pitch is similar, except Google can offer them text syndication … with embedded ads, of course.
For the half-million or so advertisers, most of whom have or will have Web sites, Google can say, hey, would you like some content on your site, and, hey, it will include non-competitive ads, and you’ll get a piece of the action. You don’t have to just pay Google now; we’ll pay you as well.
You can get dizzy rounding this Googletastic virtuous circle ever more quickly. It’s the marriage of old-fashioned "you-want-fries-with-that?" marketing and of the greatest human invention for dynamic syndication, the Internet. The potential fly in the ointment is that the hundreds of millions of people with Google imprinted on their minds for "search" may already be getting YouTube or MySpace or Digg or Flickr imprinted on their brains for video, images, or other cool stuff.
The growing potential power of this network cycle is difficult to comprehend. But it explains a lot. It explains how AdSense can be connected to Google Premium, the long-delayed program many publishers have signed up for in an effort to expose more of their archival content to Web users. It explains how it will make it easier for the paid-sub crowd to dabble with ads revenue, too. It explains the various Google "tests" of everything from print magazine ad placement to mobile ad products to this week’s Google Coupons product.
It explains the power of a set of content relationships that may start with a Google Premium program and extend into the mother ship itself, Google Base, Google’s all-purpose content repository.
It explains Google Checkout, which can grease the skids of any kind of commerce really, including syndication.
Certainly, there are many syndicators out there, from old-world King Features, United Media, and AndrewsMcMeel to recent would-be 2.0 entrants such as Revver, ClipSyndicate, Voxant, Pluck and Mochila. Outsell recently wrote about Web-based syndication and Mochila’s promise of a new content exchange.
Some may have better knowledge of syndication. Some may know content better. Some know users much better and many are cooler, as Google has begun to take hits for its China actions, click fraud, the Froogle flop, etc. Some may have better admin tools for publishers. But Google will prove to be a tough competitor, if it decides syndication is not just another experiment, but a serious business going forward.
In Outsell’s Opinion: Today, the emergence of Google as a pre-eminent network of our times is breathtaking to behold. Outsell believes all companies in the content and content syndication business must pay attention to Google’s potential as a major syndicator. It can be a major disrupter of the business, and, of course, a partner, given its massive reach.
It’s a good checkpoint time for such companies, a time to recalibrate their place in the evolving syndication ecosystem. It’s tough to operate a syndicate start-up in this environment, just as it’s hard to operate a mature ad-based content creation, whether you are Time Warner, Tribune, or CBS. Following the players closely and testing new business models and new syndication schemes is a key for publishers of all kinds. And for publishers and other syndicators, be brutal with yourselves about what you do best and know best about your audience. Brand that on your minds, and make it the core of why you will continue to be visible and attractive in a landscape in which Google is the new Starbucks – it’s on every corner.