Marketing Pilgrim

By Carrie Hill

Tomorrow after the market closes, Google will release their earnings report and it looks like they’re racing to make that bottom line look more appealing to investors.  Let’s break down the issues for stock-market-novices like myself.

As Andy reported earlier this week, search spending was down around 8% for the 4th quarter—but according to an article in MediaPost, the clicks are still coming in. Ad pricing is declining to keep people spending money on the revenue model.  The shoppers are still there, but making the end-sale is a now bit more difficult and people are more reluctant to invest in PPC when the cost per conversion is rising—hence the drop in cost per click rates. 

With the rise in popularity of creating fake viral videos to promote products, we have to start wondering if they do more harm than good. This is a question Sarah Perez recently asked over on ReadWriteWeb.

Sarah presents the latest case of viral hoaxing, featuring a blonde woman claiming to be looking for the person she met in a cafe the other day. She establishes a connection with the viewer by talking about how she was drawn to him, but not in a creepy way. She is looking to return the jacket she left behind, and is asking for him to email her on the account she setup and gives out in the video.

The real purpose of the video is to create awareness for the jacket which is sold by the creator of the video, Witchery menswear.

It’s definitely time for more Gphone rumors, don’t you think? Read Write Web reports today on a rumored Gphone from Samsung.

Once the topic of furious rumor and debate, the Gphone has cooled off. The first Gphone, the T-Mobile G1, debuted in October. While it was pretty cool, it was obviously far from perfect.

Design issues with the slide-out keyboard gave many pause, and naturally there have been a few other issues with Google’s Android OS. Many have said they’d rather wait until Google irons out the issues that plague all new OSes.

Whether the issues with the phone or the operating system have dampened the popularity, since the G1 premiered, there have been almost no rumors about future Gphones. Motorola’s promised Gphone was originally due out next quarter, but probably won’t premier until the end of the year.

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We’ll have another great contest coming up soon, so stay tuned by subscribing to our RSS feed.

For the past couple of years, Google has worked hard to try and convince the world that it’s not a one-trick pony. Today, it admits that its enormous success with paid search ads does not mean it can dominate other marketing channels.

In other words, it’s shutting down Google Print Ads.

While we hoped that Print Ads would create a new revenue stream for newspapers and produce more relevant advertising for consumers, the product has not created the impact that we — or our partners — wanted. As a result, we will stop offering Print Ads on February 28. For advertisers who have campaigns already booked, we will place their ads through March 31.

Translation? You were right, we were wrong…..neighhhhhhh!

(hat-tip)

A recent article in Wired called The Plot to Kill Google details some of the major legal and political battles that Google finds itself in with corporations that have a shared interest in the evolution of the web. The authors describe Microsoft as being a major enemy of Google, and responsible for spearheading an advocacy effort to thwart the now botched Google/Yahoo ad deal.

Apparently, Microsoft was successful at convincing Tom Barnett, assistant attorney general for antitrust, that an ad partnership between Google and Yahoo constitutes a monopoly.

Traditional advocacy efforts entail organizing consumers/voters around a specific issue, and leveraging their voice to push through a specific set of policies. However, Microsoft took a different approach by rallying up corporate entities, to lobby on behalf of Microsoft’s cause.