We’ve all noticed that he’s been acting strange recently. Pushing his beliefs on other people, snooping around the smartphones of business associates and even outright lying when faced with difficult questions.
Yes, Google has not been himself recently. But why?
It’s because their main source of income, search advertising, looks like it will be drying up over the next decade or so and the company is grasping at straws trying to figure out where to go from here.
Search Revenues Drying Up? What?
To understand the end, you must understand the beginning. The year was 1998 and everybody thought building a search engine was a stupid idea. Search was already good. Why reinvent the wheel?
But Sergey Brin and Larry Page were nerds on a mission. They thought they could come up with a better search engine, one that delivered a set of results that was closer to what people were looking for than the results served by other search engines such as AltaVista and Ask Jeeves.
And they were right. The internet of the late 1990′s was a chaotic mix of information, content and junk. Google did a better job of cutting through the clutter than the search engines that came before it. As a result, they took the spot as the most-used search engine on earth.
Flash forward 14 years and Google is one of a biggest, most important companies in the world. Alexa currently lists Google.com as the Internet’s most visited website.
Here’s the problem though: Facebook is #2 and if growth trends continue, it will overtake Google within the next year or two. In fact, Facebook is already beating Google according to Hitwise, a company that competes with Alexa in measuring and reporting the world’s web traffic.
OK, so Google may be #2 rather than #1. That doesn’t make them a loser, does it?
Not yet.
Google still relies on advertising revenue that is built on a foundation of search results. And search is getting less relevant all the time as services like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest begin to soak up most of the time consumers spend on the web.
So How Does That Work?
Well, Google is a good search engine because it does an awesome job of inspecting that big, messy clutter of content we discussed earlier and picking out the little bits and pieces that you want while ignoring those that you don’t. But as people increasingly spend their time with social sites, mobile apps and an array of other closed platforms, the clutter of content found on the open web is becoming less important.
The internet of yore is like the great wilderness that North America was hundreds of years ago. It’s open and wild. Each square mile is a little different from he one next to it. It’s hard to find your way around, even with a compass.
The internet of the future is like our current transportation system. Well-engineered roads, cars, planes and trains perform specific purposes in near-perfect ways. No more wagon-cart robberies. No more dying of dysentery.
Facebook, Twitter, mobile apps and the rest are the railways, roads, buildings and airports of the internet. They help us get where we want to go faster and more reliably. They provide specialty services based on specific needs.
As the old-style open web becomes less important, search suffers alongside it. That’s why Google is so desperate to push Google+ on us. They need us to use Google-owned closed platforms so they can continue to serve us targeted ads based on what they know about us.
Like Google, We Must Adapt
The open web is more work to advertise on than mass media. Instead of placing a couple of big buys with companies like CBS, one must strategically plan what sites and formats to use to connect with consumers.
But guess what? Advertising in this emerging world of closed platforms requires even more legwork. One must make arrangements with each platform individually. The upside, however, is that you have a better chance of arranging a unique, custom execution that stands out from competing brands that advertise in the same space.
For example, Kraft Macaroni & Cheese used Twitter to connect with consumers on Valentine’s day by arranging for the famous “Golden Voiced” YouTube sensation Ted Williams to record personalized videos for the writers of the romantic tweets that he liked best.
And where were those videos hosted? On YouTube, Google’s video platform. Maybe there’s hope for them after all.
So as you continue to capitalize on web banners, search and other standard forms of digital advertising, make sure you are beginning to invest in executions on closed platforms as well. Google took too long to recognize the shift that is taking place and now they are trying to catch up. Avoid their mistakes and make sure you are proficient in the new wave of advertising opportunities by the time they become a necessity rather than an option.
Greg Steen, 04.04.2012
View the original article here What Google Can Teach Us About the Future of Advertising | Moxie Pulse.
