Google is taking a friendlier approach to publishers with its discussions about possibly paying them a licensing fee for content, as The Wall Street Journal reportedlast week. The talks are said to be in the early stages, but they may help publishers create another source of revenue as they cope with declining ad sales.
The value of publisher content to Google has been hotly debated since last year. The News Media Alliance, a nonprofit that represents more than 2,000 newspapers in North America, argued that Google makes at least $4.7 billion a year from “crawling and scraping” their content. Google refuted the claim, which also was questioned by media analysts, executives and columnists.
It’s hard to imagine that publishers have much bargaining power with Google, given that it’s the most popular search engine in the world outside of China. Even if antitrust authorities manage to compel Google to undo its acquisitions of DoubleClick, YouTube and Android, the company will still dominate internet search.
It’s also important to understand the difference between Google Search and Google News, the two main avenues to publisher content from the search company.
Google Search is valuable to publishers, helping them to connect with online audiences. The key debate is whether Google helps or hurts traffic with search results. Google has said it drives 10 billion clicks to publishers’ websites and is providing an invaluable service.
Some publishers, especially in France, have argued the search results show too much copyrighted content from their websites. Instead of urging people to click through, Google gives readers just enough information to stay on its site, the argument goes.
In addition, Google News gathers headlines from publishers in one place, helping readers to find the latest headlines. Google doesn’t have advertising in Google News, which means there isn’t any revenue to share with publishers.<
However, as other companies like Apple, Facebook, News Corp and AT&T develop news aggregation services, the search giant has more competitors for user attention.
Facebook last year announced plans to share revenue with publishers, while Apple has a paid digital newsstand that also provides additional income. Google’s willingness to pay for publisher content is a welcomed development.
The biggest ads from the biggest brands in big TV moments used to be dominated by cars, candy, and beer. Now—like everything else—it’s Big Tech.
For 32 years, USA Today’s Ad Meter has measured the popularity of Super Bowl ads, and this year’s list looked different than ever before.
Google nabbed the No. 3 spot, Amazon No. 7, and Microsoft No. 9. Even Facebook, which ranked much lower at No. 39, was airing its first-ever Super Bowl spot but still managed to beat out such TV ad stalwarts as GMC, Audi, Coke, and Pepsi.
Seemingly out of nowhere (although after years of building up to it), Big Tech has finally become the kind of major TV-advertiser class that used to be the sole domain of legacy brands—those TV ad staples in such popular categories as autos, beer, and candy. For most of their history, these companies scoffed at traditional media. Can’t measure it, can’t convert viewers into customers, not enough real-time data. Yet here are the 21st century’s most dominant brands behaving like their counterparts of the late 20th, using TV as a key tool to build image and consumer loyalty. Taking a half-step back, this development is a bit rich given that other than Microsoft, these are companies whose businesses are working, through digital advertising dominance and streaming content, essentially to destroy the modern TV industry.
The Super Bowl and most other high-profile TV opportunities like the Oscars and Grammys are now where the biggest tech companies go to forge the kind of emotional relationship with consumers that helps prevent us from becoming too critical, too nervous, and too creeped out by their actions.
It could not have been scripted better.
Big spenders
Microsoft was one of the biggest TV ad spenders in tech last year, shelling out half a billion dollars. On its Surface brand alone, the company boosted ad spending by almost 20%, to an estimated $219.1 million, according to measurement firm iSpot.
Amazon spent more than $1.25 billion overall in 2019, boosting TV ad spending for Prime, for example, by a massive 487% to hit about $210 million. Also notable for Amazon, it more than doubled TV ad spending on its home security system Ring, hitting about $79 million in 2019, compared with $32 million in 2018. Given that the company was recently accused of providing user data to Facebook and other companies without making Ring users aware that their data was being shared, adding to its other privacy scandals, it’s going to need all the brand loyalty it can muster.
Facebook is the smallest of the big tech companies, and it correspondingly spent just $300 million on TV marketing last year, with more than half of it, according to iSpot, going to burnish Facebook’s brand.
The ads, the strategies
After Google ran its Super Bowl ad on Sunday night, Twitter lit up with posts about its emotional effectiveness.
Microsoft received similar kudos for its ad profiling 49ers assistant coach Katie Sowers, which hit the perfect balance of product, brand, and a message of female empowerment that Secret and Olay, both of which have been marketing to women for as long as they’ve existed, couldn’t manage to find.
Amazon was back at its goofy celebrity best, this time teaming with Ellen DeGeneres to wonder what life was like before Alexa.
And then Facebook dropped in with an homage to eclectic Groups, with a side dish of Sly Stallone and Chris Rock.
All the game needed to have a Big Tech full house was Apple, but even Cupertino managed to launch a new spot yesterday for its Arcade video game subscription service.
Anyone wondering why the planet’s biggest and most successful tech and digital media companies are increasingly turning to good old-fashioned TV ads need look no further for a reason than what comedian and talk-show host Desus of Desus and Mero had to say:
As I wrote on Sunday, Facebook made its users the focus of its Super Bowl ad to draw as much attention as possible away from its myriad of corporate issues. Each of the companies chose the largest advertising stage and its most strategic products—Facebook Groups, Amazon’s Alexa, Microsoft Surface, Google Search—as the device with which to build a narrative and emotional connection with users.
Back in 2018, Google CMO Lorraine Twohill heralded the brand’s ads “Parisian Love” (which became Google’s first-ever Super Bowl ad) and “Dear Sophie” as the spark for what’s become the company’s strategy around humanizing its products and itself. When she joined the company in 2009, the marketing formula was more tech nerd than Mad Men and went something like this: We have to launch a new product, here’s a blog post, and here is a video of the product manager explaining its features. Please watch the video.
“In the early days, we had a Chrome digital-only campaign, which was about three things: safety, simplicity, and speed. Very rational,” said Twohill. “That did get us so far, but no one gets out of bed in the morning and says, ‘I need a new browser.’ What changed the game for us was to go out and create ‘The web is what you make of it,’ which is essentially a brand campaign about people using the web to make their lives better.”
Replace “web” with soap, cars, beer, insurance, or burgers and it becomes pretty clear that these companies we see as among the most innovative in the world still rely upon some of the most hardy advertising tropes in existence. Amazon’s humor is no different than VW in 2011’s “The Force” that charmed us all just before the company’s reputation imploded under the emissions scandal. Or how Snickers uses it to avoid us looking too closely at the sustainability and labor challenges of the chocolate industry. Facebook’s Groups spot is the direct descendant of any commercial gleefully celebrating human gathering, from McDonald’s “You Deserve A Break Today” back in the ’80s, to the longstanding idea of Miller Time.
Microsoft’s Super Bowl ad was fantastic, but let’s face it, the point was Sowers’s story and her accomplishment, not a tablet computer, and could’ve easily been a spot for paper towels. Kind of like P&G’s long-running “Thank You, Mom” Olympic campaign. And while Google’s “Loretta” expertly uses its own products to make those human connections, it hinges on tying human connection and emotion to the brand, a tactic perfected in spots like Coke’s classic “Hilltop” and Budweiser’s “Puppy Love.”
Back then, we were being charmed by companies that we knew—or had some sense—that they were connected to such serious problems as obesity, pollution, addiction, and more. Those, of course, still remain, but say what you want about beer or fast-food burgers, they don’t lead to issues of data privacy and misinformation, among others.
The emotional connections forged by these ads seek to paper over all of that, at least for 30 seconds at a time.
Oh, and add in a CEO tweet for good measure.
What’s next
These challenges—and Big Tech’s need to cultivate as much goodwill as possible—aren’t going anywhere, so expect this type of TV ad spending to continue to grow, at least until they actually do kill broadcast TV. This will be most acute during major events like the Super Bowl, Oscars, World Series, and anywhere else our fragmented media culture manages to come together in anything even remotely resembling a collective cultural experience. The more we love their ads, the more likely we’ll be to buy and use their products, and therefore less likely to address potential concerns, vote to have monopolies broken up, or otherwise question their motives.
On the bright side, though, at least Big Tech didn’t try to sell us a baby peanut.
We finally know how much Google is making from ads on YouTube.
Google took in more than $15 billion from YouTube ads in 2019, the company revealed. That number, nearly 10 percent of Alphabet’s total revenue, doesn’t include other sources of revenue from the video platform, including subscriptions.
Google disclosed the numbers, along with revenue for its growing cloud business, for the first time ahead of Alphabet’s fourth-quarter earnings call.
“I’m really pleased with our continued progress in Search and in building two of our newer growth areas — YouTube, already at $15 billion in annual ad revenue, and Cloud, which is now on a $10 billion revenue run rate,” CEO Sundar Pichai said in a statement.
The new disclosure, which included revenue totals going back to 2017, highlights just how quickly YouTube’s ad business has grown, with ad revenue nearly doubling since 2017 when the video platform took in $8.1 billion. Ad revenue in 2018 was $11.1 billion.
Up until now, Google has declined to break out YouTube’s revenue, which has been a source of much speculation.
Pichai also shed light on how YouTube’s subscription business is doing. The company now has more than 20 million subscribers to YouTube Premium and YouTube Music, and 2 million subscribers to YouTube TV. Overall, YouTube’s non-advertising revenue, which includes subscriptions and commerce, amounts to $3 billion.
The new stats also come as Google is facing increasing scrutiny over its ability to police its video platform for disinformation and other unsavory content. And Google, like Facebook, is facing an antitrust investigation.
Users of Google search on desktops may have noticed a slight change over the last week and that change is affecting what they perceive as an ad. This represents a further blurring of the lines between ads and organic sources in search.
Beginning Jan. 13, Google redesigned its desktop search experience to feature favicons, or preferred icons, next to every single entry, including an ad. Always shown at the top of a page of search results, ads receive the same favicon treatment: the word “Ad” appears in bold, yet small black lettering. Site owners can also choose their featured favicon.
This redesign first appeared in May on Google search for mobile devices. At the time, Google said the move was prompted by a desire to help users “better understand where the information is coming from and what pages have what [they’re] looking for.” Bringing that same design to desktops this month adds to the consistency of the search experience, regardless of the device, according to Google.
This isn’t the first time Google has changed the look of ads in search.
“What an ad looks like has gotten more subtle over the years,” said Brooke Osmundson, associate director of paid search for NordicClick, a pay-per-click agency. “It’s started to blur the lines between what users thought was an ad or wasn’t.”
Search Engine Land has posted a helpful infographic showing how Google’s design tweaks in search have evolved, so users find it heard to distinguish between what’s an ad and what is not.
The concept of banner blindness loosely applies here, said SEO consultant Bill Hartzer. Now that all search results and ads have favicons, “searchers will see the favicons and overlook them, also ignoring the ‘Ad’ favicon as well,” he said. “So, they’re going to be more likely to click more on ads, which will benefit advertisers. But, in the long run, it will also benefit Google.”
Early results from NordicClick seem to support that theory. Osmundson pulled data for four different clients, comparing their respective search engine ads’ click-through rates (CTR) during Jan. 7 to 13 with those during Jan. 14 to 20, after Google’s desktop search changes went into effect.
For all four clients (a local health care company, two business-to-business companies and an e-commerce company), the desktop click-through rates increased and ranged from 4% to 10.5%. All clients had slight declines in the click-through rates on mobile devices.
Last May for three of those four companies, after Google made its mobile search changes, mobile click-through rates increased 17% to 18% for two companies during the May 24 to 30 stretch, as compared with the May 17 to 23 period.
“If we see increased CTR, we might be spending through our budgets more quickly than we realized,” Osmundson said. “That’s great for our clients but in marketing we need to do more due diligence in our jobs to make sure they have a good user experience on the site to see our dollars work a little bit harder for us.”
David Ogletree, owner of the WME Training pay-per-click training company, however, did not find a significant increase in click-through rates when he pulled similar data for his clients. “There was essentially hardly a change at all back in May and now in January, too,” he said, referring to data he pulled for his 50 clients.
And RPA Advertising has also not detected a change. “We haven’t seen a noticeable impact on our clients’ paid versus organic search traffic,” said Anthony So, group director of search for RPA. “Favicons will have a stronger impact in verticals that consist of a lot of affiliate marketing partners.”
Following the changes made to mobile search in May, Hartzer conducted his own experiment to see what would happen if he used the same “Ad” favicon on his own website. (The “Ad” favicon was active in search for three days in May until Google removed it.)
“When I added the ‘Ad’ favicon on my site, and Google showed it in the organic search engine results, there were less clicks, as the ‘Ad’ text (favicon) was next to the listing in the search engine results,” Hartzer said, adding that the results did not surprise him because right at that time people were still becoming accustomed to seeing the “Ad” favicons next to search results.
Over time, however, banner blindness will take hold, Hartzer suggested. And when users unconsciously ignore the “Ad” favicon, advertisers will see higher click-through rates, he said.
Banner blindness is also something RPA’s SEO lead Ethan Hulbert is concerned about. “Google points to its non-English searches to show that the translated label is more differentiable,” he wrote by email. “For instance, a French search on google.fr will bring up ads labeled with the full ‘Annonce,’” Hulbert said. “But since most searches we care about are English, this gives us little comfort.”
Added Hulbert: “I think this trend is worth paying attention to, and expect it to have a muted effect over time.”
While Ogletree did not see any change in click-through rates for his clients following Google’s search design changes, this will ultimately benefit advertisers and, of course, Google, he observed.
“Every decision they make is to get more money from advertisers,” Ogletree said. In the third quarter of 2019, Google parent company Alphabet made nearly $34 billion from advertising alone.
Spare a thought, if you will, for the digital advertisers who have grown dependent on knowing your exact whereabouts at any instant.
New information shows that the biggest source for all this location data—namely, the smartphones that we carry around everywhere—is drying up as Apple and Google offer stronger, clearer privacy controls on their platforms.
Some recent data points to consider:
Since the launch of iOS 13 last fall, the amount of background location data that marketers collect has dropped by 68% according to Location Sciences, a firm that helps marketers analyze location data.
Location Sciences also found that foreground data sharing, which occurs only while an app is open, dropped by 24%.
A Google spokesman tells Fast Company that when Android users have the option to only share location data when they’re actively using an app, they choose that option about half the time.
As Digidayreported last week, apps are now seeing opt-in rates under 50% for collecting location data when they’re not in use, according to Benoit Grouchko, CEO of the ad tech business Teemo.
None of this means that location tracking is going away, but with more people opting out of sharing their precise location with apps, advertisers now have to make do with less accurate information. That in turn could make them rethink overly invasive tracking in the first place.
[Screenshot: Location Sciences]
All about the options
With iOS, users have been able to stop any app from collecting location data in the background since 2017, but Apple gave this feature much more prominence in iOS 13. If an app is gathering location data while it’s not in use, iOS can show a pop-up with an option to cut off access. Apple also added a “just once” option in iOS 13 that requires apps to ask for location permission every time they’re opened.
“As those particular options were made available to users, we do attribute that to the decrease in sharing,” says Jason Smith, Location Sciences’ chief business officer.
[Screenshot: Location Sciences]
Android’s location controls haven’t always been as useful, but the latest Android 10 release plays catchup with a similar “only while in use” setting when apps request location data. Like iOS, Android 10 also alerts users when an existing app collects location data in the background and provides a shortcut to stop the app from doing so.
These tools are becoming available just as we’re becoming more aware of how mobile apps have quietly trafficked users’ location histories. The New York Times, for instance, has reported on how apps like The Weather Channel, GasBuddy, and TheScore have collected detailed location data from users even while their apps aren’t in use, and it has documented how this supposedly anonymous data can pinpoint individuals based on their movements.
How apps will track you next
With Apple and Google providing less ready access to GPS location data, marketers will likely turn to IP addresses for location tracking instead, says Location Sciences’ Smith. Apps and websites can collect this data through the mobile or Wi-Fi network you’re using, and neither iOS nor Android offer any built-in controls to prevent it.
Still, IP addresses are less accurate than the precise GPS coordinates that apps had been collecting previously, which means marketers will have a tougher time tracking your precise whereabouts. In practical terms, that means location-based advertising will probably get a lot dumber in the near term, as marketers lose the ability to determine what store you visited or where you had lunch.
“You have an environment in which advertisers have been paying for—at a premium cost—high-quality, highly accurate GPS data,” Smith says. “They’re now confronted with a phenomenon in which that data is less available.”
[Screenshot: Location Sciences]
Location Sciences’ angle in all of this is to sell tools that help advertisers know what kind of location data they’re purchasing. That way, they don’t waste money on inaccurate information. Other players in the ad tech business, however, are hoping for a more fundamental shift toward privacy.
We’re sort of at the precipice of this educational environment.”
Raman Sidhu, VP of business development for the marketing analytics firm Beemray, says the new tools in iOS and Android—along with new regulations such as Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation and the California Consumer Privacy Act—could be a wake-up call for a complacent industry.
“There are lot of different solutions now that are getting a lot of momentum, which previously wouldn’t have gotten any momentum because there was no reason for the agencies to think about something outside of the box,” Sidhu says.
One of those solutions, of course, could be Beemray, which rejects the idea of following people around and instead uses contextual clues (approximate location data among them) to predict which messages might resonate. As a basic example, someone who’s sitting at a desk in London and reading about travel might see an ad for direct flights to New York. Since the resulting ad wouldn’t be as hyper-targeted as what advertisers are used to, Sidhu expects that brands would have to focus more on production values, or on forging direct relationships with consumers who might provide data more willingly.
“Advertising should get better for consumers, because rather than being followed around with the same ads . . . the ad should be complementary to that user’s moods, moments, mindsets, and emotions,” Sidhu says.
The other possibility is that users will look to further protect their location histories through Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), which can mask the IP addresses on which advertisers are increasingly relying. Google already offers a VPN service for customers of its Google Fi cellular plans, and my colleague Michael Grothaus has called for Apple to build a VPN into iOS. Firefox has been experimenting with VPN service as well, and Amazon’s Eero routers offer VPN service through the Eero Secure+ subscription program. It’s not hard to imagine VPN becoming a standard feature on our phones, computers, and home networks in the future.
Location Sciences’ Smith says that’s one possibility among many as people become more privacy-conscious.
“We’re sort of at the precipice of this educational environment,” he says, “in which people are now becoming aware of what their options are, how those options impact the security that they will receive, and how other third-party companies are being respectful and mindful of those options.”
Are you ready for a Google-centric advertising world?
That’s what is about to happen. Last week saw Google announce it will be phasing out third-party cookies from Google Chrome. Chrome represents almost 70% of the market for web browsers on a desktop and 40% in mobile. Safari, Firefox and Microsoft have the rest, and many of them already include ad blockers, cookie-clearing and other tools that hamper digital targeting.
Google is going to offer its own ways to target leveraging Google data, which means if you work at an ad-tech company not named Google (or Facebook or Amazon, for that matter) then your ability to deliver targeted ad messages is going to be severely impacted.
This news does not come as a surprise. It has been rumored for years. And now it is coming to fruition.
Some industry pundits will make claims that this creates an opportunity for new ways to reach targeted audiences by proclaiming their technology does X or Y. These will be versions of fingerprinting or ad-DNA.
In any case, these claims will fall on deaf ears. The truth is that most marketers will see this, understand the impact, and move on. Moving on means they will either work with Google, or not worry about targeting, instead focusing on price.
A world where a third-party solution like the cookie is gone means prices will be pressured to drop to account for the untargeted nature of online advertising outside the Google parameters.
Google will still offer targeting. That targeting will be at a premium because it offers one of the only accurate ways to deliver a specific audience at scale. Outside of Google, ads will be scattershot, delivered to anyone on a platform where they come up.
The only way untargeted ads will work for marketers is if they are lower priced, to account for lower response rates. Then, just maybe, they have a chance to compete.
OTT and digital video ads may still have the opportunity to “target” based on data or context, but display will take a step back because the performance will be harder to achieve.
This does open the door for Facebook, strangely enough. Paid social is a channel where data can still be leveraged — although that will be using Facebook data on Facebook platforms. The dollars that were still hanging on for targeted display and native ads could easily be seen to shift to paid social, further padding the pockets of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
Google said it has no desire to injure publishers looking to make money from ads, and it’s telling the truth. Its intent is to create a stronger sense of demand for Google products, and doing so does mean a negative impact on anyone not currently in its network.
The marketers are the ones who will drive this adoption. Marketers like to work with Google. No matter how many ad-tech companies call, reach out and proclaim to have an amazing solution, Google still gets the benefit of the doubt.
A marketer’s day is busy. There are many demands on our time, and we don’t have hours upon hours to decode and test a new vendor whose solution may be great, but has questions of scale.
Speaking from my own perspective, I like new ideas and new solutions, but I prioritize the ideas that have the most bang for the buck. Most of the time, that defaults back to the larger, established players we currently work with and who have proven to provide scalable value in the past.
So, what does that mean for the industry? It means cookies are about to (finally) become a relic of the past, along with popups, pop-unders and 468x60s. It means the gap between the large players and the smaller niche players is about to widen even further. It means OTT and digital video are about to become the final battlefield for the remaining digital ad budgets.
Here’s to seeing what happens in the next 11 months!
Reporting by Paresh Dave; Editing by Richard Chang.
(Reuters) – Alphabet Inc’s (GOOGL.O) Google within two years plans to block a common way businesses track online surfers in its Chrome browser, endorsing costly changes to how the Web operates as it tries to satisfy increased privacy demands from users.
Google’s plan is to restrict advertising software companies and other organizations from connecting their browser cookies to websites they do not operate, the company said in a blog post on Tuesday. (bit.ly/2RmTYKK)
Apple made a similar move in 2017 in its Safari browser, but Chrome’s global market share is more than three times greater at about 64%, according to tracking company Statcounter.
Though the two-year goal is new, Google’s announcement had been expected within the industry for months. Financial analysts expect minimal effect on Google’s own ad business because it gathers data on users in many other ways.
But shares of some rival advertising software companies fell on Tuesday, including Criteo SA (CRTO.O) by 8% and Trade Desk Inc (TTD.O) by 1.4%.
For nearly three decades, cookies placed by relatively unknown companies on nearly every website have fueled advertising on the internet.
Cookies are a tool within browsers that allow website operators to save data about users, so that for example, they can keep a particular user logged into a website over multiple days.
But cookies also have given obscure software vendors, whose technology is used by website operators, a broad window into which webpages a user is visiting. When shared with advertisers, the data enable predictions about which ads the individual would find relevant.
Users and regulators have questioned how businesses with access to the browsing data store and share them since the advent of the cookie. But over the last three years, data breaches and new privacy laws in California and Europe have prompted major changes at internet businesses.
Google said its new restriction would not go into effect until alternatives that Google considers more privacy-preserving are viable. Any major transition in Web technology requires significant investment by website operators, and it remains unclear whether more limited data on users would depress online ad prices.
Justin Schuh, a director for Chrome engineering at Google, said initial feedback to proposals it announced in August “gives us confidence that solutions in this space can work.”
Feature Image Credit: FILE PHOTO: The Google app logo is seen on a smartphone in this picture illustration taken September 15, 2017. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
Reporting by Paresh Dave; Editing by Richard Chang
Google surveyed consumers around the world to find out which factors drive people to make an online purchase.
It’s November, and the official start of the holiday season is right around the corner. In fact, some consumers began their holiday shopping back in October. However, the biggest shopping days of the season are still ahead of us, and business owners need to think about the best ways to create effective online marketing campaigns. To help business owners and marketers achieve their goals for the 2019 holiday season, Google has released some data about consumer behavior and how to create online campaigns that move people to action.
Google conducted a study in four international markets to help identify the things that matter most to consumers in that region. The data provides insight into shopper motivations in the U.S., U.K., India, and Brazil.
Contrary to what many people think, social media isn’t the grand motivator that some marketers think that it is. Social media content can increase awareness about a product. However, simply having something on Facebook or having an Instagram influencer promote the product isn’t enough to sway hearts and minds. After years of being bombarded with products and images on social media, many consumers in the U.S. are looking for more when they make online purchases.
Most Americans consider getting a good price on a high-quality item is more important than other factors. When ranking the factors that matter most to them, Google’s survey respondents noted that getting the lowest price for an item, free shipping, as well as deals and discounts are what motivate Americans the most when it comes to shopping online.
In the report, Google suggests, “When you can beat the competition, make sure you show it. And keep an eye on the market to get a sense of what specific products might be worth undercutting.” The report also notes, “Consumers in the U.S. are much more interested in fast shipping times than in-store pickup.”
The responses from the survey participants also showed how popular online shopping is with consumers in the U.S. For example, the average user bought more than four items of hard goods (i.e., not digital purchases) every month Similarly, the average person spent more than $150 on recent online shopping trips. The survey was conducted in October, so the rate purchase and the amount spent is likely to increase in months like November and December.
Marketers may be surprised by which things mattered to consumers. For example, having the ingredients listed for a product is more important than popularity on social media and even more important than recommendations from family and friends or loyalty rewards program.
For the most part, consumers in the U.K. were motivated by the same things that North American’s found enticing. However, because of the different tax systems in Europe, and the international shipping needed for many online transactions, U.K shoppers need to pay attention to other factors that could raise the price beyond what the person is willing to pay.
As Google stated in the report, “U.K. shoppers may pay more attention to customs, taxes, and shipping times in the near future, which might affect the rank and order of their values.”
Marketers should look at this recent report from Google to figure out what matters most for their target audience and for the goods they sell. The document breaks up the results for hard goods, soft goods, and everyday essentials. Using this data can help marketers create more compelling online campaigns.
As privacy concerns grow, companies like Google and Facebook that rely on data collection and advertising for revenue are increasingly in the spotlight. But is it really possible to give up Google’s vast range of services? Here are my recommended alternatives.
Over the past two years, I’ve been switching between a succession of iPhones and a series of Android devices, using each for an extended amount of time. Spending months with each mobile platform has been a tremendously useful exercise, helping me understand the strengths and weaknesses of the two dominant smartphone options.
But every time I pick up one of those Android devices, a nagging question pops up in the back of my mind. It’s the same one I hear from friends, family members, and readers every time the topic turns to smartphone platforms: “Aren’t you worried about your privacy when you run Google’s software?”
It’s a legitimate question, and there’s no easy answer.
Google, like Facebook, has a business model that’s built on surveillance. The company’s stated mission of “organizing the world’s information” also includes capturing as much as possible of your information. That information is the base layer of some undeniably useful services, which in turn fuel the advertising that makes up the overwhelming majority of Google’s revenue.
In the first six months of 2019, Google took in just over $75 billion in revenue. More than 84% of that revenue, about $63.3 billion, came directly from the advertising platform made possible by data collected from a few billion people, including you and me.
To be fair, Google provides ample privacy controls, including options to delete saved data. They also count on most people being too busy, distracted, or unconcerned to actually use those controls. And even if you meticulously delete your activity history. there’s not much you can do about the profile that Google and its subsidiary DoubleClick (and the advertising ecosystem that’s grown up around them) create based on those activities in real time.
Going through Google’s default privacy controls is an exhausting task.
Unlike the other giant of online advertising, Facebook, the option to delete your Google account isn’t very practical. It’s hard to imagine a world without Google’s outsized influence, but it is possible to rebuild your personal online environment around an alternate set of services and experiences.
There are plenty of options from smaller third parties, but for the most part the replacements for the Google services you know come from Apple and Microsoft. Those two tech giants have the requisite scale, but their business models don’t rely disproportionately on data collection and advertising. When your revenue comes mostly from high-margin hardware (in Apple’s case) and business-focused productivity services (in Microsoft’s case), it’s easier to place greater value on personal privacy, and there’s less incentive to design products and services that explicitly turn data into revenue.
So how do you reduce the role of Google in your tech life? I took a look at my own experience to see where you’ll find the most interesting alternatives. Note that some of these options require paid subscriptions, in contrast to Google’s ad- and data-supported services.
Say adios to Android
There are two and only two mobile device platforms that matter: Android and iOS. As a result, ditching Google means learning to love Apple hardware and software. Because of the way Google licenses Android, it’s almost impossible to find a device that isn’t loaded with Google services. And although you can tweak and tune privacy settings and replace default apps, you can’t easily get rid of the Google Play services and store.
Switching to an iPhone isn’t exactly painful (except perhaps for the pricetag). You get world class hardware, and you also avoid one of Android’s worst flaws: unpredictable updates.
Apple devices get fully supported updates for years, and you are not at the mercy of a carrier to get the latest version. That support lasts a long time, too. The iPhone 6S, for example, which debuted more than four years ago, runs the brand-new iOS 13 and will be supported for another year. You can’t say that about any Android phones released in 2015.
In fact, even new devices often have to wait, sometimes forever, for upgrades. I have three Android phones on my desk right now, from Motorola, Samsung, and Google. All three devices were released in 2018, but each one is running a different Android version (8, 9, and 10). I have no idea if or when those two phones running out-of-date Android versions will get the latest features.
And I have to say I trust Apple’s biometric support more than I trust the same features on Android devices. A pair of snafus involving biometric technology this week, on the latest premium devices from Samsung and Google, make me even more comfortable with switching platforms.
Choose an alternate default web browser
If your objective is to cut ties with Google, you’ll need to choose a different web browser than Google Chrome, naturally. The logical alternatives are Mozilla Firefox and Opera; on MacOS and iOS, you can also choose Safari.
Several people in the comments section have recommended the Brave browser, a relatively recent addition to the category, led by Mozilla co-founder Brendan Eich and focused relentlessly on privacy. I tried Brave when it first came out and will take another look. It’s a strong contender.
The dark horse in this field is Microsoft’s new cross-platform Edge browser, based on the open-source Chromium engine. (I do not recommend the current Edge browser, available only in Windows 10, which is deprecated and will probably be replaced within a year.)
The most relevant feature is tracking protection, which offers this simple but easy-to-understand interface in the new Edge Settings pane on the desktop.
This Edge setting blocks trackers without requiring third-party software.
How effective is it? Click that Blocked Trackers link to see a running count. On this browser, the number-one source of trackers is Google, which accounts for more than 20% of the blocks on my production PC.
Although it’s technically in a beta release, the new Edge browser has been extremely stable on Windows 10 for me; it also runs on MacOS and has versions for iOS and Android. It allows you to install extensions directly from the Chrome Web Store, and pages you visit look like they’re running in Chrome.
The Bing brand is an easy punchline for anyone trying to get some cheap tech-oriented laughs, but the underlying data is no joke. In its just-concluded 2019 fiscal year, Microsoft brought in more than $7.6 billion in revenue from search advertising. That’s a fraction (less than 10%) of what Google makes, but it’s still a very big business on its own; that revenue makes it the fifth biggest division at Microsoft, one of the only companies big enough to compete with Google on this playing field.
But you don’t have to insert yourself into Bing’s advertising ecosystem, either. The privacy-focused DuckDuckGo (“the search engine that doesn’t track you”) returns results using Microsoft’s data along with a few hundred other primary sources,
In the comments, several readers have recommended Startpage.com, a Dutch company that uses Google search results repackaged in a privacy-focused format that eliminates tracking.
Replace Google Voice
I’ve always been reluctant to use Google Voice for any serious business-related purpose, because it seemed like yet another free service that Google would eventually kill off. One plausible theory I’ve heard is that Google Voice is so widely used by Google execs that discontinuing it is not an option.
Google Voice has the twin benefits of being device-independent and supporting SMS messages. That means you can use a virtual number other than your regular mobile phone number for security-related tasks, like two-factor authentication. That makes SIM-swapping scams dramatically less effective.
Google Voice also runs on multiple devices, which is handy for someone who switches devices regularly. Not having to reconfigure 2FA when you switch to a new device is liberating.
I can’t find a free alternative to Google Voice that I can comfortably recommend, but the venerable Line2 service, at $10 per month (or $99 a year, billed annually) fills the bill. YouMail, a call-blocking and voicemail service, includes a second line with SMS support as a standard feature on its $10.99 per month YouMail Professional products. I’ve used it for several years and recommend it.
Use something other than Gmail as your default email client
I’m old enough to remember when Gmail was a closed beta and you had to have an invitation to get your own account. In retrospect, we should have gotten a clue that something was amiss when the Gmail beta launched, officially, on April Fool’s Day, 2004. (Not a joke. DuckDuckGo it.)
Back in 2017, Google stopped its controversial practice of scanning the content of free Gmail accounts for the purpose of targeting ads, and the company says any processing it does of message content (to generate reply suggestions, for example) is done by machines. And, of course, paid GSuite business accounts have always been disconnected from Google’s ad infrastructure.
The main reason I don’t use Gmail, though, has nothing to do with privacy. It’s just that I really really don’t like the browser-based interface on the desktop, where I do most of my serious email work. Alas, that’s how Google wants its customers to use Gmail on PCs, and Gmail developers don’t seem to care that their service doesn’t play well with other clients.
For business accounts, I use Office 365, and most of my personal accounts are on Outlook.com. If your employer uses Gmail, you’re not free to switch, but for personal mail it’s easy to set up a new default address, forward messages from Gmail, and hardly skip a beat.
For paid business email, there are third-party alternatives if you’d rather avoid working with Microsoft directly. I recommend Intermedia, which offers hosted Exchange and Office 365 with a much less intimidating interface. Many hosting providers offer email options to go with your custom domain; for example, you can get Office 365 subscriptions from GoDaddy, with or without a hosting package. It pays to check with your current hosting provider.
Simple steps can make the difference between losing your online accounts or maintaining what is now a precious commodity: Your privacy.
Some of Google’s stickiest services are its cloud-based storage and collaboration tools: GSuite (Docs, Sheets, Slides), Google Drive, and Google Photos.
Office 365, which includes a terabyte or more of OneDrive storage with every subscription, is the logical alternative to GSuite and Google Drive. Earlier this year, I did a comprehensive comparison of the two services, “Office 365 vs G Suite: Which productivity suite is best for your business?” Read that for a quick refresher on what makes Office 365 different from GSuite.
You can also choose from a wealth of independent cloud storage providers, including well-known services like Dropbox and Box and others that are less well known but technically superior, like Intermedia’s SecuriSync, which is available bundled with email and Office or as a standalone product.
Google Photos is a harder service to replace. For the basic task of backing up and organizing your digital photos, both Apple (iCloud) and Microsoft (OneDrive) offer options to upload photos from the default camera roll on your mobile device to their respective services. OneDrive is the clear choice if you also want those photos to be accessible on a Windows 10 PC.
But no one quite does the AI-powered magic that Google does with Photos. Just be aware that all that magic also feeds Google’s insatiable appetite for data.
Consider Apple’s Maps app
In its early days, Apple’s Maps product was clearly inferior to Google Maps. That’s no longer true, and Maps now plays the same counterweight-to-Google role on iPhone that Bing plays to Google Search. Location tracking is one of the key privacy concerns of our time, so it’s worth at least trying to make the switch.
For those who decide Apple Maps is not good enough, though, you have no credible alternatives to Google.
How do you solve a problem like YouTube?
If you’re a YouTube fan, there’s virtually no way to avoid having your activities tracked by Google, with the inevitable algorithmic recommendations not far behind.
And there’s nothing quite like YouTube on the planet. You can avoid some tracking by using your browser’s private/incognito mode, but that’s at best a partial fix.
Do you see any options I missed? Use the contact form to send me your thoughts via email, or share other alternatives in the comments section below.
Among all the Google products, Google Alerts is perhaps one of the least known, but definitely one of the most powerful. It taps into Google’s endless crawling of the web—done to power its search engine—but flags up terms as they’re indexed, not when you get around to looking for them. Think of it as Google results coming to you.
Instead of running a search every day to see if your favorite band is touring, for instance, or to see if any new rumors have been reported about the new iPhone, you can sit back while those stories get straight into your inbox.
How to set up a Google Alert
Setting up Google Alerts is easy and straightforward. From your computer or mobile device, head to the Google Alerts page, and sign in with your Google account if you haven’t already.
Type the search phrase or words you want to keep tabs on into the Create an alert about… box at the top of the screen. Note that you can use the standard search operators here, the same you would use when searching on Google—quotation marks around a phrase will match that exact phrase; a plus symbol in front makes sure your search will always include that word, and a minus symbol in front of a word tells Google to return matches that don’t include it. So, entering “dolphins -miami” would get you results about the aquatic mammal but not the football team, for example.
As you type, sample results will appear so you know if you need to further refine your search. When you’ve got an alert you’re happy with, choose Show Options. Here you can choose how often your alerts appear, and whether you want to see all the results to your query, or only the most relevant. The latter option takes into account several factors, including the site it was published on, and how many times people click on it, among others. This option is much more helpful if you’re looking for something that returns a lot of hits.
When you’re happy, select Create Alert, and the results will start arriving in your inbox as frequently as you want (as they’re found, once a day, or once a week). Once you create your alerts, you can go to the Google Alerts page to modify or remove it.
Some trial and error might be required to find the right balance between getting overwhelmed with results and not getting any at all, but you should quickly get a feel for how specific you need to make your search terms and how often you need to receive your various Google Alerts.
Searching on Google is easy, but you know what’s easier? Having Google do the searching for you.David Nield
1. Important news topics
Google Alerts are ideal for keeping in touch with news stories, especially on topics that don’t often make the headlines. Maybe you’re interested in archaeological digs in one part of the world, or a specific type of art, or in a certain fashion trend—Google Alerts can bring articles on these topics straight to you.
2. Your favorite bands, shows, and authors
With so much music to listen to these days, it can be all too easy to miss a new album or a new tour from that band you were really into a couple of years back—but Google Alerts can keep you in the loop whenever something new happens.
But this extends beyond musical artists—you can check for new seasons of your favorite show on Netflix, or new books from your favorite authors, etc. Whatever type of cultural content you’re interested in, Google Alerts can serve it up.
3. Watch out for plagiarism
If you or the company you work for are in the writing business, then Google Alerts is a fantastic way of watching out for plagiarism. You can easily make sure no one else is passing off your work as their own, or borrowing your regular turns of phrase, or trying to impersonate you—create alerts using your name, or the titles of your articles, or some text from inside them to try and catch plagiarism (or discover who is quoting your content).
4. Check for company mentions
This one is work-related, but it’s still interesting—you can use Google Alerts to monitor what other people are saying about your company on the web, good or bad. Google Alerts is also useful for keeping up with industry news, and if your firm is a big name in your chosen industry, you should get plenty of news results too.
If you don’t want to get notifications about online mentions of your company, you can key in your name instead (this is one of the alerts recommended by Google itself). It might seem a somewhat egotistical move, but at least you’ll know if other people are talking about you (and maybe you’ll come across some other people with your name, too).
Wait, you did what? Oh, no… that’s just someone else with your exact same name.Omar Medina Films via Pixabay
5. Your personal details
Has your postal address or your email address leaked out on the web? A simple Google Alert can tell you. Remember no one else can see these alerts, so your privacy is not at risk here. If you do find your email address is out there for everyone to see, you might have been the victim of a hack, or have been listed in an online directory—whatever the context, Google Alerts helps you take action quickly.
6. Keep tabs on people
Who are you interested in? Whether it’s your long-lost brother, a particular politician, a celebrity, or a sports star, Google Alerts will deliver news on this person right to your inbox. For the most popular searches you might have to reduce the frequency of your notifications and stick to the Only the best results option, but this also works well for searches that don’t return many results at all—if someone suddenly comes back into the public eye, you’ll know about it first.
7. Local news
We’ll finish as we started, with news—the area where Google Alerts can perhaps be the most useful. In some parts of the world, finding news about your hometown isn’t always easy, but a quick Google Alert can help—if something significant happens in your area, you’ll know about it. If you live somewhere that does get plenty of news coverage, you might want to be more specific with your keywords (looking for stories on transport or crime, for example).
Feature Image Credit: Cytonn Photography via Unsplash
By Jeff Beer.