YAGG Alert: Google’s XPlatform Ad Strategy
April 2, 2009
I don’t pay much attention to online advertising, hit boosting, link baiting, or the other prime rib for the hustling set. As an aged and addled goose, I watch the world go by and the plastic trash floating in my pond. Today I noted a story with the title “Google’s Cross-Platform Advertising Strategy Is a Shambles” by Matt Marshall. You can read the article here. The idea is that there’s yet another Google glitch in the wild. According to Mr. Marshall:
Another problem is that many Internet companies compete against Google — or are anxious about Google’s agenda — and want to promote their own services and ad-selling platforms. Take Google’s DART ad-serving technology. It targets the top 200 publishers, seeking to serve high-priced ads. These top 20 or so publishers account for half of the DART unit’s revenue, but they are hurting in the downturn, and many don’t want to use the service anymore. Yahoo, the largest online publisher, but a fierce competitor to Google, doesn’t use it. AOL, another large publisher, doesn’t use it on its own higher-end properties. Microsoft, the No. 3 publisher, owns its own ad-serving technology, Atlas. And Viacom, another large publisher, recently announced its intention to move away from DART. Aside from that, the massive ad agencies that control the real dollars, lack trust in Google.
This sounded like a botch to me. Mr. Marshall seemed to reach the same conclusion. He wrote:
Regardless, it looks like Google overshot its bounds, a rare misstep for a company that once seemed invincible. Will the fissures continue to grow, making room for some of its more wiley competitors? Or will it quietly shut down the divisions that aren’t producing and act like nothing happened?
In a soft economy, Google can ill afford technical and ad problems in my opinion.
Stephen Arnold, April 2, 2009
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