Rob Berrisford.com

Google will tomorrow launch Adplanner, which looks like it could be its own version of Hitwise.

This is what was said about adplanner:

“AdPlanner, was designed to help agencies identify sites where their target audience might be active. While it uses audience measurement data, AdPlanner also combines it with search engine data and information from third parties, to determine with more precision what sites attract a certain demographic audience. It then uses that data to help agencies determine where to place ads.”

This, if you read between the lines, is exactly what Hitwise does, though it is not clear what level of detail Adplanner will give you.

Hitwise is a great tool, giving loads of details on things like click stream, competitor analysis and search terms. But if adplanner can do half of what Hitwise does for free, compared to the up to £60K Hitwise will charge you, times could prove difficult for the company moving forward.

Hitwise has always been good for search and as a benchmarking tool, where as Adplanner (as the name would suggest) has been built for CPM planners, so we will have to see if the data can be manipulated in the same way

I have applied for an adplanner account for when it goes live tomorrow, so will report back if and when I have had a play.

edit: after some digging i have found a screen shot of the new system here

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So the shit hit the fan this morning on Google with all trademarked bidding now being allowed. This was supposed to happen yesterday but it seems the flood gate only came down this morning.

I appears that Google have added all competitor keywords to their broad match. So if Apple is a broad match of Orange, now it would seem Vodafone is a broad match of BT, Apple, Woolworths and Dell. I very much doubt that Vodafone have gone out and targeted keywords like Woolworths and Dell, so Google inflicting broad match is my only explanation.

It will be interesting to see how this pans out. The Vodafone CTR on terms like Dell must be pretty low meaning they will get some high minimum bids pretty quickly. Will the big traditional search agencies keep hammering it? Chasing after every click and every £ over ride?

When will people run out of budget if they are getting enough clicks to stay in the space?

I suspect Google wont benefit from this in the long term. The search space is a mess today, they may be making more money per click but if the sponsored search listings bring up largely irrelevant results will users be more likely to click on the organics than ever before? That would be my guess.

Then again the Americans have been running on this system for a few years and it obviously hasn’t hurt Google over there.

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I was reading this morning on the Beeb about Sir Tim Berners-Lee saying that customers need to be protected from internet tracking systems. Stating he didn’t want anyone knowing his history or what he bought ect.

I am not sure how much gravity Berners-Lee holds now a days but if his ideas caught on it could be worrying times for any acquisition based online model with particular reference to affiliate.

Affiliate would obviously be the first to be hit, without tracked sales the industry doesn’t exist. Other areas of online marketing would survive, though not to the same level of success. CPM and pure PPC could continue without any decent tracking, though I am sure costs would spiral. Most PPC agencies do track properly anyway so that wouldn’t be too much of a problem.

I understand users worry about the use of their information and it would be difficult to convince the vast majority of internet users that this information is only used to pay the relevant people rather than keep tabs on them in a big brother style.

The real question in will it happen?

My suspicion is no, I think you have to look at who holds the keys to these changes?

The Traffic

Google, yahoo, msn, obviously the big boys, would gain no advantage from this, in fact it would cause them some major problems.

The Access

Firefox and IE, again this would cause problems for them, and they would get huge amounts of pressure from the advertisers. Plus have you noticed it is still quite difficult for users to find out which cookies are on their machine?

The Money

The Advertisers, they will obviously not be happy about going back to the old school when you didn’t have a clue what you were spending your money on and if it was working.

I think there will be reforms, I think the big data owners will have to agree on a policy for using this information but without some sort of data on users behavior the internet as we know it wouldn’t exist, let alone affiliate marketing.

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I had a question from a client today about sales recently and our experiences compared with their competitors. It got me thinking about the various reasons about why client’s sales change week against week.

Obviously there are the usual seasonality issues and changes to offers but apart from that, from experience, I have noticed weather having a huge affect on sales levels.

I am not sure if anyone else has noticed, but we can plot the conversion rates directly against temperature and inversely proportionally to rainfall. I.E. if it is a warm sunny day users are less likely to buy than if they can’t leave the office because it is horrible outside.

I can remember from my network days running the same report and getting the same results.

Unfortunately as a paid search affiliate users will still click on ads, they are just less likely to buy something.

This all sounds very obvious in hindsight, but do any PPC affiliates alter bids depending on the weather? Would it be worth adding it to bid management systems?

Answers on a post card!

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Google have long been rumored to be launching a phone, even before Apple were rumored to be launching a phone. These rumors have surfaced again, from good sources this time, with the suggested launch at next month’s 3GSM telecoms conference in Barcelona.

We have been told by many search gurus that the time for mobile search is coming. It has been the year of mobile search every year for the last 3 years. But I have a feeling that this time Google might crack it with the help of Dell.

If any one has a blackberry, especially a curve with gps, I would heavily recommend installing Google Maps. This piece of kit has changed my life. The standard mapping system on a blackberry is slow and clumsy, but with Google Maps the results are instant. If the program can’t find a GPS signal it will triangulate your phone signal to give you an approximate position.

The search function is brilliant too, once you have found your position you can search for ‘pubs’ or ‘the post office’ and Google maps will give you directions, opening times, phone numbers ect.

I think this is what Mobile Search is all about. I am not sure I will be making major purchasing decisions while walking down the street, but it would be handy to find the local drycleaner.

Will this fit into Affiliate Marketing? Probably not for the time being, but it is a step in the right direction.

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