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If you are easily the number 3 horse in a three horse race does it do you any good to start saying negative things about how you race? Probably not. In fact, it’s probably better for you to act a little more confident, train a little harder and do something that will move you out of the basement. This horse I am referring to is Microsoft’s Bing. One of the ways that they have decided to move up in the race is to ingest the number 2 horse (Yahoo), which is a decent play but the final product is still very far off. In the meantime it’s best not be saying the following in a Bing forums thread as reported by Search Engine Roundtable , especially if you are Program Manager at Bing Webmaster Center, Brett Yount It is well known in the industry that MSNbot is fairly slow. Ok, maybe it is well known to the industry insider but the rest of the world may not have that level of understanding. When you say something like that though now they can and not much good can come from that kind of ‘exposure’. Bing has had a pretty quiet start to the new year thus far. With all of the talk of mobile devices and mobile ad platforms and things of the future maybe that warrants Bing being left out of the conversation? Whatever the reason, maybe the better way to make the news is to be reporting on upgrades and improvements like the number one horse has been doing for the past three plus months. Ooops, I forgot. Steve Ballmer was busy promoting Bing at CES this week with inspiring words of innovation like these which I found in Forbes “More than ever we are delivering the experiences that people want, where they want them, wherever they are,” Ballmer said in his second-ever keynote speech at the Consumer Electronics Show on Wednesday night. “And of course we Bing we Bing we Bing we Bing Bing Bing all the time, at least in my world.” I don’t know about you but this kind of ‘activity’ isn’t exactly inspiring me to confidence that Bing may never be more than a distant second with its Bingahoo offering to Google for a very long time. Your thoughts?

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Bing Needs to Say Something Different

Google is stirring up buzz to rival Apple’s yearly expectations with an invitation for reporters to an event January 5—yep, just days before the CES show. Apple has made a tradition of big (or not so big) announcements scheduled conveniently upstaging the popular Consumer Electronics Show. So Google will definitely be cutting into the speculation market between now and then—especially since they told reporters the announcement, hosted at the Mountain View facility—will have something to do with their mobile OS, Android. First launched on the G1 over a year ago, “this is just the beginning of what’s possible,” Google said in the email invitation. The announcement comes less than a month after Google sent its employees home with an unlocked Android phone called the Nexus One , sparking a viral media frenzy when the employees hit social media. With free buzz already in the air and more to come, it seems entirely possible that Google will officially unveil the Nexus at the event. Apple, on the other hand, appears to be keeping any major announcements under its hat for now, with a major product announcement scheduled for January 26, according to Reuters . The anticipated Apple tablet computer would definitely rival a Google phone for buzz, but it looks like they won’t be in direct competition for consumers’ presales attention. So far, not a whole lot is certain about the Nexus One. Search Engine Journal takes a look at the definites and rumors from technical specs to carriers. On the other hand, there’s been a lot of buzz (which seems mostly misguided) around the Chrome OS being used on netbooks. Recently Google premiered a netbook with a Google OS—Android. What do you think? Will Google formally unveil the Nexus One? Or do they have something else up their sleeve?

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Google to Host Android Announcement Event

Early last month, Google announced it was acquiring AdMob for $750M. The deal is still in the works, of course—in part, at least, because the FTC is taking a first and, as of last week, second look at the deal. As the FTC continues to scrutinize the search giant buying the mobile ad giant, consumer groups are taking their opportunity to have their say —and it’s not in favor of the deal. The biggest concerns of the Center for Digital Democracy and Consumer Watchdog include decreasing competition in the mobile ad market and consumer privacy. The groups say that together, Google and AdMob would control most of the mobile ad market. AdMob is already the leader in the market, thought there’s lots of competition in that area. However, with backing from the search engine, it’s possible that AdMob could come to dominate their arena just as Google pwns theirs. The second argument is based on the fact that Google and AdMob both collect considerable information about their users. Together, that information may be a threat to consumers’ privacy, with the two entities sharing everything from searching habits to location data. The groups’ full filing with the FTC is embedded below. It’s easy to understand the appeal for Google, though—with AdMob “approaching a $100M business in the next three years,” as TC puts it, this could be the way for Google to stake their claim in the emerging mobile market. CW and the CDD often make this type of filing on Google’s acquisitions, and it doesn’t always seem to have an effect. But with the FTC already taking a harder look, their word may have that much more sway with the regulators this time around. LtrFTCfinal – What do you think? How much influence will CW & the CDD have this time? Will the FTC ultimately okay the deal?

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Consumer Groups Lobby FTC to Block GoogleMob

Last week I talked a bit about experience marketing. At the end of the post I linked to a video of a talk given by economist Joseph Pine . In Pine’s talk he briefly articulates a transformation from an agrarian economy to what we now know as an “experience economy”. Pine tells us that goods and services have become commodities, and experiences have become the growing consumer demand. It’s the same reason that so many people will pay $4.00 for a cup of coffee – the experience of connecting with a trusted brand is important to them. Pine then tells us that not all experiences are equally sought after, the dominant experience within the consumer conscious is authenticity. …authenticity is therefore becoming the new consumer sensibility — the buying criteria by which consumers are choosing who are they going to buy from, and what they’re going to buy. Authenticity is responsible for fueling the independent music and art industries. It’s the reason that original concepts , that would have been written off as foolish 10 years ago, are changing the way we communicate. And it’s the same reason why Google has grown in popularity over its competitors. But Pine then fills us in on a little secret: There’s no such thing as true authenticity. This is because every experience is created by external stimuli and thus our experiences are only as authentic as they are rendered to be. In the end it is the illusion of authenticity that drives consumers to engage. To quote Rae Hoffman , “Good spam never looks like spam.” As marketers and business owners it is our job to render authenticity. If we fail at doing so, we will lose the consumer’s trust and risk being “fake”! OK, so what’s your point Joe? Last week, Google announced a gamut of changes that they will start to implement. The most significant of these changes is default personalized search . Around the same time, Google’s CEO made some pretty alarming comments regarding privacy concerns. In short, Google now collects all sorts of data about its users and then customizes its search results and other services to reflect each users unique behavior. It collects the user’s location, the web sites that they have visited, and various other pieces of data. All of this is done with relatively no consent from the user and without notifying them. It is clear that Google’s mission statement that now reads “…organize the world’s information…” should read “… exploit the world’s information…”. All of these changes reflect a continuing trend at Google to create a highly sophisticated personalized platform that not only produces the best results but also the best ads. This disregard of user privacy completely goes against the feel good, do good image that Google has worked hard to create. As a result Google is killing its rendered version of authenticity. Pine gives us three tips to staying authentic: One, don’t say you’re authentic unless you really are authentic. Two, it’s easier to be authentic if you don’t say you’re authentic. And three, if you say you’re authentic, you better be authentic. A large part of being authentic is staying true to yourself. Which is why classifieds giant Craigslist is fighting eBay with everything they have to retain a majority of seats on their own board. For them, running the company they founded the way they always have, is that important to them. Which is the same line of thought that ultimately lost Jerry Yang his job as the CEO of Yahoo. Yang refused to sell out in the beginning to Microsoft because he believed in his company, he believed in staying true to his ideals. At the end of the day it won’t matter who has the better search engine. If Google loses the trust of its users and cannot retain authenticity, Bing, will be more than happy to step up to the challenge of earning that trust and building its own brand of authenticity.

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Cup of Joe: The Seeds of Google Destruction Are Within

This is one of those subjects that I can say that my personal experience actually mirrors what the rest of the market is apparently seeing. Oftentimes that’s not the case since I can be somewhat of a contrarian in my views and habits. Apparently much of initial push back against ads attached to video, in particular pre-roll, is starting to give way to some level of acceptance. While I am still not thrilled with it, I do tolerate it much more these days especially when an advertiser actually gets that 10-15 seconds is not nearly as annoying as 30 seconds. The NY Times reports that news sites are finding more and more success with their online video offerings as ways to increase ad revenue. The impact is even being felt beyond the delivery of news. Beyond news sites, video is now the fastest-growing segment of the Internet advertising market. Digital video amounted to $477 million in revenue in the first half of 2009, up 38 percent from the same time period in 2008, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau. I have wondered over time as to just how much video ‘regular’ people ingest and if there is room for growth. I am certainly not a ‘power consumer’ of video but I am finding myself watching more online offerings. I still avoid the ‘stupid human tricks’ side of the online video experience. In fact, any ads attached to that kind of offering will fall flat with someone like myself but I am just one point of view. What’s interesting is that the online news experience is starting to look more and more like one medium it is supposedly challenging: television. News Web sites are starting to look a lot less like newspapers and a lot more like television. CNN.com and ESPN.com are featuring video much more prominently on their home pages, often prompting visitors to press play before they begin to read. Even The Wall Street Journal has moved its video player front and center with a twice-a-day live newscast on WSJ.com. The shift is likely a natural progression since there seems to be more news than ever. Of course, we have the same number of events that are newsworthy it’s just that the ability to now see more is exponentially increased. “Every watershed event leaves video more popular than before,” said Charles W. Tillinghast, the president of MSNBC.com, a joint venture between NBC Universal and Microsoft. So as the consumer becomes more accepting and the advertisers actually pay attention to what consumers will tolerate the combination of the two is starting to become a real player in the online advertising space. One drawback will be the cost to produce this content will keep competition down but the big guys actually like that idea. “It actually works really well,” said Brian Quinn, the vice president and general manager of digital ad sales for The Journal’s digital network. A 15-second pre-roll “followed by two to five minutes of high-quality content is a fair-value exchange,” Mr. Quinn said. Analysts say they expect the flow of online advertising dollars to video to continue. The research firm eMarketer projects 35 to 45 percent growth for the segment for each of the next five years, topping out at $5.2 billion in 2014. (Even then, it would hardly rival search advertising, which is projected to be a $16 billion business.) So as this option for marketers grows there will be the usual growing pains. Among those is people starting to confuse an event with actual news and then rushing to produce more noise and junk so an ad can be slapped on it. At that point, it will be up to the consumer to “Just say no!” so the healthy balance between news and commerce can be reached as quickly and painlessly as possible. How do you feel about ads attached to any video you would like to watch? Is it more acceptable depending upon the venue? Do you make exceptions abot your reactions to ads depending on what you are trying to find?

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Online Ads Attached to Video Working Well