Google: Travel Planning
April 22, 2019
Google wants to become the one stop shop for most information needs which generate advertising revenue. Google can already track flight information, has an incredibly accurate map system, and can track down hotel and tourist sight locations. Google now wants to help people book their travel plans and earn profit from the travel industry. PYMNTS shares the news about Google’s new travel endeavors in the article, “Google Debuts Travel Bookings Feature.” Google’s new endeavor is a travel insight tool.
Google’s new travel insight tool helps people decide where to visit for vacation, including information on trending vacation destinations. Other new features include a Google Flights that allows users to search for travel destinations based on budget. At first glance, Google Flights appears to be another flight search engine like Priceline, Travelocity, Expedia, and Orbitz. Google Flights is more intuitive than a regular travel tool and offers more interaction along with price comparisons:
“Google enables users to explore the world map on Google Flights to see where you can fly on the cheap. If you live in, say, San Francisco and want to spend under $150 on flight, you search by setting a price limit and seeing only the destinations that will be in your price range to fly. For users who have decided on where they want to travel and are starting to search for flights, Google will provide price insight for most trips, which was previously only available for holiday dates. It shows whether the price of the flight is high, typical or cheap compared to what the airline typically charges. Google will also alert you if the price won’t decline more or if it will increase soon.”
And hotels? Why not? Using the new “Deals” feature, users can search and find hotels that offer cheaper rates for a specific hotel or area. Hotel review pages have also expanded with machine learning to include more photos and reviews.
Google Flights is an interesting intuitive tool, especially for the budget traveler. Other travel Web sites offer the same service, but you have to scour to find the deals and conduct numerous searches at once. Google makes it easy for advertisers? For users? Not an issue.
Whitney Grace, April 23, 2019
Alphabet Google: The Wing Clipping Accelerates
December 9, 2018
It is not a great time to be a tech titan. Facebook and Google and their peers seem to be embroiled in daily dilemmas. These kings of the internet are taking it on the chin regarding privacy, fake news, and more. And, yet, we are still surprised when their names pop up in the news feed. Such was the case with a recent Vulture piece, “Google Accused of GDPR Privacy Violations By Seven Countries.”
According to the article:
“The complaints, which each group has issued to their national data protection authorities in keeping with GDPR rules, come in the wake of the discovery that Google is able to track user’s location even when the “Location History” option is turned off. A second setting, “Web and App Activity,” which is enabled by default, must be turned off to fully prevent GPS tracking.”
As detailed in the New York Times, Mark Zuckerberg’s strategy of “Deflect, Deny, Delay” has been keeping them out of any serious legal hot water. Google’s challenge may rip headlines from the Zuckerberg connection machine.
The reason? Information is now becoming available about Google’s malicious ad network flaws. Since Google found inspiration in GoTo, Overture, and Yahoo’s pay to play system, Google is now talking about ad abuse; for example, “Tackling Ads Abuse in Apps and SDKs.”
What worse? Siphoning data or failing to identify issues which undermine the Madison Avenue way?
Ad fraud? Facebook and Google alike but different except to regulators in Europe.
Stephen E Arnold, December 9, 2018
Patrick Roland, November 30, 2018
AdWords Adds Feefo Power
November 19, 2018
What the heck is Feefo? Is sounds like the name for the newest and cutest Internet star or some sort of product for the furry community. The Drum shares that it is actually an online review company (huh?) in the article, “Google To Strengthen Adwords Intelligence With Feefo Partnership.” Feefo has now partnered with Google AdWords. Feefo will use its sentiment analysis technology, it works with companies Next, Vauxhall, Expedia, and Thomas Cook, to discover advertising keywords from brand reviews. These keywords will then be pumped into digital ads to increase click-through-rates.
Google is proud of the new partnership:
“Adrian Blockus, head of channel sales for the UK and Ireland at Google, explained: ‘We’re pleased to have Feefo on board as a Google partner. Feefo has the product knowledge, advanced technology and insight needed, to create and optimize Google AdWords campaigns for their customers.’”
AdWords users will be able to use Feefo insights to spruce up their brand copy and landing pages to reflect the language and sentiment customers use in their reviews. In other words, Web sites will be rewritten to use customer-based language to make it sound more consumer friendly.
It is an ingenious strategy, because consumer feedback is being directed funneled into a company’s Web site. The language on a Web site will sound more natural and fluid to directly reflect consumer experiences with the product or service. Feefo says it will help consumers make confident and informed decisions, but actually the consumers are providing the keywords.
Whitney Grace, November 19, 2018
Has Alexa Become Unstoppable?
August 8, 2018
But for 98 percent of Alexa users’ failure to buy stuff by talking to Alexa, the device looks like a successful one.
Some at Beyond Search believe that digital home assistants are basically spying on us. Perhaps conversations and requests are being cataloged, and in some cases used against some in court. Is it possible that Amazon’s intelligence services have access to the Alexified content.
One hopes Google and Amazon and the like aren’t aiming to be big brother, Perhaps a different objective is in play. The CNBC story, “Amazon Alexa vs. Google Home: Advertisers Weigh In.”
We learned:
“The most expensive ad space in the future will be Alexa…hey are really just integrated in the shopping platform…. This has also opened up the door for marketers to sell items through Alexa apps. VaynerMedia worked on converting popular mobile game “Heads Up!” for Alexa, and was the first to integrate a voice-activated one time payment functionality to buy add-ons.
This story is not alone in predicting this. The Wall Street Journal called your home assistant “the new battleground” for ad dollars. If that is the case, we predict the advertisers are right and Amazon will have the advantage. While it might be projecting, we wouldn’t be surprised if this is already the end of Google Home. Money talks and Amazon has a giant window into that world. But the intelligence angle continues to capture our attention.
Patrick Roland, August 8, 2018
Google DoubleClick Lowers Ad Revenue
June 2, 2018
Power outages happen, so you wait for them to be fixed. In the digital age, however, when there is a power outage a day’s entire profits can be lost. ZDNet shares a story about a recent outage with Google’s ad stack: “Google’s DoubleClick Outage Should Force Marketers To Ask Some Hard Questions.”
DoubleClick went dark in March 2018 and it demonstrated how much publishers rely on Google. The search giant did not really care, though. Google simply shrugged its shoulders and said to limit tracking and change over to text ads. As a result, publishers are probably going to depend on more transparency. Here are the reasons why, according to the write up:
- DoubleClick is the dominant display ad serving platform and there aren’t other options.
- Google is a near monopoly with DoubleClick and already struggling Web publishers get punched in the head again.
- The ad stack on the Web is integrated so DoubleClick’s reliability woes are enough to make sites crawl.
- Google has rightly been focused on mobile and its core search ad business. That reality makes you wonder how much Google has invested in DoubleClick over the years.
The bug was eventually fixed, but it does not offer much of a resolution for future problems. DoubleClick advertises itself as a reliable company that runs on Google Cloud, but it was not reliable in March. Google can takes its sweet time to fix the bug, but what are publishers supposed to do when they are not making a profit?
Next up for Google DoubleClick?
GDPR.
Whitney Grace, June 2, 2018
Google Bans Bail Bond Ads
May 28, 2018
Google is moving forward with its efforts to manage certain types of advertisements.
Google has placed bail-bond companies in the same category as payday lenders, ArsTechnica reports, “Google Slams ‘For-Profit Bail-Bond Providers,’ Won’t Let Them Advertise.” The brief write-up points to Google’s announcement that it will no longer allow these companies to advertise on its platform. The post also supplies a link refreshing us on the 2016 ban placed on payday lenders. Writer Cyrus Farivar tells us:
“In a blog post, the company suggested that such ads constitute a ‘deceptive or harmful product,’ citing a 2016 study concluding that minority and low-income communities are typically most affected by such services. ‘For-profit bail-bond providers make most of their revenue from communities of color and low-income neighborhoods when they are at their most vulnerable, including through opaque financing offers that can keep people in debt for months or years,’ Google wrote….“Also in 2016, another study found that ‘there are 646,000 people locked up in more than 3,000 local jails throughout the US,’ simply for their inability to pay a bond, which is what drives many people to the services of a bondsman.”
The post cites advocacy group Color of Change, which had called for this ban. The group’s director believes it is high time corporations are held accountable for enabling what he considers the predatory for-profit bail business, and encourages other corporations to follow Google’s lead. In the meantime, Google’s ban is scheduled to take effect in July 2018.
Progress?
Cynthia Murrell, May 28, 2018
Google: Excellence Evolves to Good Enough
May 25, 2018
I read “YouTube’s Infamous Algorithm Is Now Breaking the Subscription Feed.” I assume the write up is accurate. I believe everything I read on the Internet.
The main point of the write up seems to me to be that good enough is the high water mark.
I noted this passage, allegedly output by a real, thinking Googler:
Just to clarify. We are currently experimenting with how to show content in the subs feed. We find that some viewers are able to more easily find the videos they want to watch when we order the subs feed in a personalized order vs always showing most recent video first.
I also found this statement interesting:
With chronological view thrown out, it’s going to become even more difficult to find new videos you haven’t seen — especially if you follow someone who uploads at a regular time each day.
I would like to mention that Google, along wit In-Q-Tel, invested in Recorded Future. That company has some pretty solid date and time stamping capabilities. Furthermore, my hunch is that the founders of the company know the importance of time metadata to some of the Recorded Future customers.
What would happen if Google integrated some of Recorded Future’s time capabilities into YouTube and into good old Google search results.
From my point of view, good enough means “sells ads.” But I am usually incorrect, and I expect to learn just how off base I am when I explain how one eCommerce giant is about to modify the landscape for industrial strength content analysis. Oh, that company’s technology does the date and time metadata pretty well.
More on this mythical “revolution” on June 5th and June 6th. In the meantime, try and find live feeds of the Hawaii volcano event using YouTube search. Helpful, no?
Stephen E Arnold, May 25, 2018
Apple and Google: Beacons Beckon and Inform
May 17, 2018
I read “Apple News Officially Lets Publishers Use Google’s DoubleClick to Serve Ads.” The main idea is that a couple of large companies are teaming up in a way that matters: Advertising or at least keeping some folks happy. I don’t have a dog in this fight, but the news, if accurate, reminded me that making money is a goal which makes bad experiences like appointing some individuals to a company’s Board of Directors go away.
The write up asserts:
The ad-targeting options break down into two categories: context-based targeting and audience-based targeting. Contextual ads can be aimed based on the article’s publisher, its content category within Apple News and the tags a publisher appends to the individual article as well as according to whether it appears on an iPhone or iPad. Audience-wise, the ads can be targeted by a person’s location (though only at the designated market area level), their gender and their age group.
What’s this mean? A partial answer can be excavated from the glorious prose of these public documents:
- US7039599, Method and apparatus for automatic placement of advertising
- US7085682, System and method for analyzing website activity
- US7349827, System and method for reporting website activity based on inferred attribution methodology
- US7844488, Method of delivery, targeting, and measuring advertising over networks.
These documents can be downloaded from the USPTO. Think of the link as a beacon which is a heck of a lot less effective than the inventions disclosed in these patents.
Stephen E Arnold, May 17, 2018
Amazon Beats Google for Holiday Advertising
February 28, 2018
When Google first started out, it earned the majority of its income from online ads. Online advertising used to be a surefire way for a regular income, but ad blockers, private browsing, and changes in the Internet of things have made Internet ad profits dwindle from dollars to cents. Google used to be on top, but now Amazon might be angling its way to the top. AdTechDaily published the article, “Amazon Leads The Crowd For Holiday Paid Search Advertising” how who dominated the 2017 holiday advertising market.
The data in the article is about Amazon UK, but the UK usually bears a strong resemblance to its American counterpart. Kantar Media conducted a survey about click rates for UK retailers in the 2017 holiday season. Amazon captured 8.8% of mobile ad clicks and 7.5% of desktop clicks. The data collection for the survey was quite enlightening:
Kantar Media found that 4,259 advertisers sponsored the keywords via text ads on mobile search, compared with 3,798 advertisers sponsoring the same keywords via desktop search. Of these, only seven retailers generated a click share higher than 1% for both desktop and mobile search text advertising. Together, these retailers captured a combined 26% share of all desktop clicks and 28% of mobile clicks on the 990 retail keywords studied.Online giant Amazon.co.uk held a significant lead ahead of Argos, the retailer in second place for both desktop and mobile search ad clicks. Currys, John Lewis and online marketplace AO.com completed the top five in the list.
Google is a competitive advertising marketplace, but large retailers have the deep pockets and large inventories to give them a run or a “click” for their money The retailers sponsor a higher number of keywords based on their inventories, so they can have bigger ad campaigns with bigger budgets. It also does not hurt to have well-known brands in their inventories. Luxury brands are always reliable.
Google is struggling with its online ads, shall we call this the Froogle Fumble?
Whitney Grace, February 28, 2018
Another Tale of Googzilla: The Browser Discontinuity
September 5, 2017
I read “My Friends at Google: It Is Time to Return to Not Being Evil.” The write up is a gentle, polite first person narrative about one browsers brush with the Google. Who knows if the narrative reflects the GOOG’s side of the story. I found these statements interesting. You, gentle reader, will have to consult the original and make your own decision.
ITEM 1
Google increased their proximity with the Mozilla foundation. They [Google] also introduced new services such as Google Docs. These services were great, gained quick popularity, but also exposed the darker side of Google. Not only were these services made to be incompatible with Opera, but also encouraged users to switch their browsers.
ITEM 2
Recently, our Google AdWords campaigns were suspended without warning [for the Vivaldi browser]
ITEM 3
Two days after my thoughts were published in an article by Wired, we found out that all the campaigns under our [Vivaldi’s] Google AdWords account were suspended – without prior warning…When we reached out to Google to resolve the issue, we got a clarification masqueraded in the form of vague terms and conditions… In exchange for being reinstated in Google’s ad network, their in-house specialists dictated how we should arrange content on our own website and how we should communicate information to our users.
ITEM 4
A monopoly both in search and advertising, Google, unfortunately, shows that they are not able to resist the misuse of power.
Intriguing if the information is accurate. Is the Google not the lovable, friendly outfit we love so much in Harrods Creek? Nah, as the write up explains:
After almost three months of back-and-forth, the suspension to our account has been lifted, but only when we bent to their requirements.
No problemo, right?
Stephen E Arnold, September 5, 2017
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