An advertising confession

So regular readers might notice something extra - some Google ads down the right hand sidebar.  I feel like I need to explain.
 
Typepad offers the option of including Google ads on your blog.  It's free, of course, and we get a tiny cut of any revenue that comes from people clicking on the links (though I can't imagine there would ever be much, if any, revenue).  But until now I hadn't even considered it - in fact, I thought that it was somewhat gauche.  I realized I kind of look down on Google ads. When I saw them on other blogs, I felt the slightest bit of condescention - like they were desperate for a few pennies. Which is stupid.

I had an awakening yesterday speaking with a friend of mine who said "of course you should have some - you're in advertising. You need to experience how Google's ad program works."  And he's totally right.  It was a moment of clarity. Google is our competition, this may be a big part of the future of advertising, and we have a great opportunity here to see how it works in action, to play with its inner workings, to educate ourselves. 

So why didn't I take that opportunity before?  Why didn't I even see it?  I think it's because I look at Google ads as if they're small-time, like classified ads in the back of a church circular or something.  I dismiss them out of hand because they're "not real advertising," because they're not clever.  Even though I think about blogs and YouTube and culture and media stuff a lot, I still have some old-school, big advertising agency arrogance.

Cleverness has nothing to do with it - it's a completely different model.  By putting very specific ads (like a local dry cleaner) in very specific contexts (like a search on "removing wine stains"), it acheives huge relevance so it doesn't have to be all slick and clever - in fact, it can look identical to every other Google ad.  Mass advertising needs to be all candy-coated because it's not usually in a relevant context so we need to entertain or surprise people, or give them fodder for building meaning and identity.  But we've become so used to focusing on the candy coating that we sometimes forget the important stuff underneath.

And so the reality, of course, is that Google ads are one of the ultimate long-tail success stories.  The same way that Amazon makes tons of money off of obscure books that only 4 people want (books which would never get stocked in a big bookstore), Google makes tons of money off of connecting people with specific services that would never advertise on TV or in a magazine.  How much money?  Google's revenue from advertising is predicted to top $2 billion US dollars this year.  Leo Burnett's worldwide revenue from advertising last year was $826 million. 

What an idiot I've been. 

 

Comments

[MarcusBrown]

Jason,

don't be too hard on yourself. Google ad's are kind of clever. But it a robot sort of way. Right now the google ad's on this blog are for:

1. Set up your blog for free

2. Get movable type today

3. Free Live journal account.

Now theses ad's sort of fit to the context in which they appear; this is a blog. But they're not intelligent.

It would have been cool if they had picked up on the Toronto post and placed ad's for:

1. Travel Tips for Canada
2. Hotels in Toronto
3. Last minute to Toronto.

But now you've got them on your blog, as you say, you can learn from them.

[garth breaks]

Nice to see the ads, I'll be curious to hear your thoughts once you start playing with the tracking side of AdSense.

To Marcus' point, the ads aren't presently accurate. In fact, I don't think they're even really "turned on" in the proper sense. It looks as though they're pulling directly from TypePad (likely 'cause that's where they've been turned on from), thus the ads feature movable type, live journal and type pad (all of which are most certainly relevant to TypePad).

Allow me to suggest that you turn off the ads from your TypePad controls, hold your breath and dive into the following :
https://www.google.ca/adsense/.

Doing so will give you a much better sense of how everyone from grups to grandparents are figuring out simple ways in which to generate revenue from their site(s).

AdSense has a wizard that allows users to configure the size, colour and (to some extent) content of a sites ads. Once it's properly turned on you'll get a much better idea of how targeted AdSense campaigns are.

Lastly, in light of your comment "Google is our competition, this may be a big part of the future of advertising" I'm curious to know if LB (or any other major agencies for that matter) are doing either of the following:

1) ramping up their media departments on the logistics (and economics) of keyword campaigns

2) looking to add search engine optimization specialists to their interactive teams

It appears that these roles are presently being outsourced to smaller specialized shops, which seems like a flashback to the days when agencies thought it best to outsource site design & development too...