WSJ meet WSJ.com

So Dow Jones finally realigns.  As Paul points out over at Infectious Greed this is one of the developments that makes you think those Careerbuilder commercials have more than a little truth to them.

Either way, as a subscriber to both the print and online versions it got me thinking about my regular interactions with the WSJ.

I use my 15 minute commute as a way to scan the print publication for articles of interest.  These articles then become the things I seek out at wsj.com when I log in.  This tells me three things:

1. I have a short commute
2. The print version is actually easier to scan for articles than the online version, otherwise I would read the articles of the print version and scan the online version later.  This is completely backwards.
3. Personalization.  The Online Journal needs to personalize the experience to a far great extent than it currently is.

Here’s an idea.

Findory needs to hook up with these guys to personalize the entire layout of the WSJ.com  WSj could pay Findory for service or Findory could give it to them and other online pubs while building their RSS mashups on the backend. They benefit from getting access to the data at publisher sites which helps them to better deliver their personalized news service which in turns drives traffic back to Findory.com.

Oh nevermind.  This makes too much sense for the soon to be extint newspapers its much more fun to gripe about Google News.  Which brings us right back to those CareerBuilder commercials.

Search is crucial to marketing.

says David Verklin. OK, we get it. Incorporating search into a component of ad campaigns is something that AOL starterd way back in their AOL keyword days. We get that too.
What isn’t yet clear to me is what this is going to mean to advertisers at the end of the day. Asking users to type in “pontiac” at google is smart except that Mazda can buy the same keywords. So until advertisers wrestle control of their own trademarks back from the search engines a lot of their efforts to drive traffic are going to help their competitors….and of course, Google. At some point an industry group is going to join the legal battle on the trademark front or create an Advertisement portal of some kind to create some protections for advertisers.

Wizzbox loves Slingbox

My apologies for commenting in the third person.

The guys at Sling Media deserve major kudos for their Sling Box. It is a fantastic device and as long as they don’t go Tivo on us they are going to be a big part of the digital landscape for a long time.

At least they didn’t mention ‘branding’.

The Performics 50 was published yesterday. As a marketing tool this probably is worth the effort, but I’m just not sure that you can draw any meaningful conclusions about search in general from this report.

About the only interesting takeaway is that when Google churns out a new poilicy it has wide ramifications for advertisers as Performics so eloquently put it:

In Q3, we reported on the shrinking segment of “Pure First Place” keywords and how
that might be a reflection of changes in policy regarding trademarked terms or affiliate
bidding. In Q4, we see price pressure coming not just from the top of the range –
typically attributed to increases in competition – but also from the bottom, likely due to a
significant shift in how bids are addressed on Google.
With paid search still being a youthful industry, these sorts of abrupt changes are going
to happen while the business sorts itself out. In order to respond to this kind of dynamic
marketplace, marketers need to be flexible with their programs, their expectations and, in
some cases, their budgets.

If I’m reading this right what they are saying to advertisers is “you need us (and probably more money) to help you navigate times when Google’s needs a quick lift in revenue, otherwise you may end up like FTD or Blue Nile.”

With apologies to the Guiness guys, BRILLIANT!!!

A shiny new toy all agency holding companies ought to have.  The WSJ has a Q&A with Rishad Tobaccowala.

Denuo is being billed as a consultancy, but it looks like a nice hedge against the changing media buying landscape to me.

itunes and NBC

Can someone help me understand why NBC would run a pilot of “Conviction” on iTunes but not at NBC’s own site? Advertisers used to attached their brands to companies like NBC.

What the Olympics coverage seems to be saying with the Google/Pontiac and the above as leading examples, is that Old Media now is being forced to tap into new media to complete the cycle for the consumer. Google and Jobs as the Master I guess.

Google vs. Perfect 10

Paul Kedrosky has the best take so far on yesterday’s announcement, where he points out that this really boils down to AdSense policies.

I agree, but also wonder if this could be a trouble spot for the keyword trademark disputes as well. The judge wonders about the financial relationship b/w copyright infreingers and Google where the tie-in is the involvement of the infringers in Google’s AdSense network.
Well, a much more substantial relationship exists between Google and the companies that purchase another firms marks in their keyword advertisements. Google benefits, not just from the sale of those keywords, but also from higher than average conversions infringers receive from the suspect keywords which most of the time results in the sale (or increased pricing) of all the other keywords an infringer buys from Google.
I’m not sure whether the judge is right or wrong in this case, but I bet the lawyers for Check N Go and American Blinds are watching.

Google Analyst Day

Word from Jonathan Berr over at Thestreet.com is that Google is reaching out to analysts in advance of the upcoming analyst day.  While I’m not an analyst I am a potential investor in Google who has thus far stayed on the sidelines due to what I see as significant near term risk in the stock.

The Barron’s article points out what could happen to the stock price should Google’s growth slow a little and while it doesn’t describe what could make Google miss analyst expectations for revenue growth it does highlight the fundamental problem guys like me have in the Google.  Google could remove some of the questions about the risk by simply opening up a little about the source of their substantial profits.  Google or course claims they are just protecting trade secrets but one could imagine that they also could be protecting an inflated stock price by not being transparent on their revenues.

 
Below is one guy’s take on the risk factors that are preventing me from becoming the type of long term investor Google reportedly covets.  These are the issues that could lead to the Barron’s scenario and these are the types of questions any analyst ought to be asking at the upcoming analyst day.

 

1. Gambling and pornography.   Google is a media company.  While many media companies forgo revenues from Gambling and Pornography due to business or statutory reasons, Google seems to have little limitations on the ad revenue it will accept from these sources.  Google should come clean on just how much revenue it is getting from these and other potentially problematic categories before some congressman or state legislature gets an itch to curtail the practice.

 

1. DomainPark.  Google is empowering cyber-squatters through its DomainPark program.  These domains often infringe on trademarks.  They are also driving up the price of launching an online site by creating a scarcity of attractive domain names while creating massive economic value for the cybersquatters. How much revenue are you deriving from the program Google?  How much of this revenue is accounted for as Google sites revenue?  These programs do far more harm than good, for Internet users and for small business owners and anyone else who may want to purchase a domain and one wonders how much longer this goes on before someone tries to put an end to it.

 

1. Pricing pressure.  Its time the folks at Google helped the investment community get a gauge on how they are dealing with the pricing issue.  The recent FTD and Blue Nile announcements highlight the overall concern that keywords may well be overpriced already.  Are these isolated incidents?  Do subcategories outside of flowers and jewelry show similar trends?  What about the changes Google has been making to the paid listings part of it SERPs, is this a reaction to a drop in click-through rates?  How does the AOL white-label announcement effect pricing?  What about the ongoing trademark disputes (examples: 1, 2)?

The company needs to explain to the investor community what is going on with the above before an event comes along, causes a drop in revenues and we see the Barron’s scenario play out before our eyes. Google should own up to these risks and the analysts should hold them to it.