Google's Snip Machine Makes Local Sites Snippy
Good piece by the Chronicle’s James Temple on the new re-targeting of “local” advertising. Chalk it up to mobile access near-ubiquity and to the ability to combine geo-location with other targeting (content read, clickstream observed, profile info known). The goal of seemingly everyone: billions of “local” dollars. Temple calls it “Version 2.0 of the war to own online search”.
A couple of intriguing twists:
- As Google’s Place Pages targets all info local, sites like OpenTable, Zagat’s and Yelp (which Google sought to buy last fall) are starting to find themselves aggregated and “fair-used” (how’s that for a handy verb?). So, fewer visitors are coming to their sites, since they can see the relevant snippets (“worth a visit,” “deathtrap,”) on Google. Echoes of news companies experience with Google and a reminder: the 1709 Statute of Anne (full title: “An Act for the Encouragement of Learning”), the forerunner of “fair use,” never anticipated the multiplying commercial value of snippeting. Snip, snip here; snip, snip there; snip, snip, everywhere and pretty soon you’re making profits of $6.5 billion a year.
- As the FTC investigates Google’s November acquisition of leading mobile ad company AdMob, you’ve got to wonder how the FTC is looking at questions of market dominance these days. In the old world, industries were so much more self-contained. AT&T was a clear monopoly. Now, the haze of change and the blur of market overlap creates a commercial headache for everyone (competitors coming at you from all sides), but for regulators, it poses tough questions. Is the FTC asking whether Google will unfairly dominate the mobile ad business (latest counterpoint there is Mr. Jobs’ ads-within-apps announcement)? Or is it asking a wider question as to how much Google dominates, fairly or not, the digital ad business? Sure, most of Google’s revenue of $23.6 billion (and profits of $6.5 billion) come from paid search. That certainly is a business it dominates, latest data point there Yahoo’s exit from the once-much-hyped Yahoo Publisher Network. Is the FTC looking at the trinity of Google’s ad play: Paid Search (AdWords) + Online Display (DoubleClick, acquired in 2007) + Mobile (Ad Mob, acquired in November). (Quote Eric Schmidt: “Our next huge business is display.”) Digital media aren’t bought silo by silo; they are bought to reach a set of would-be customers, across platforms and ad type.