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The ‘super alliances’ that could help media owners fight back against the tech giants

January 22, 2019 No Comments

As we start to think about our predictions for the year ahead, I’m anticipating that 2019 will be the year of collaboration. With the Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple (GAFA) quadropoly continuing to dominate the ad market, more publishers are realising there will be strength in numbers when it comes to fighting back.

In 2018 dozens of new media alliances were created among publishers and broadcasters. Of particular note in the UK was the launch of the Ozone Project in June, with The Guardian, News UK and Telegraph pooling their resources to create their own digital ad network, serving up a monthly audience of over 42 million unique users. Facebook has 40 million monthly active users in the UK. So, when it comes to scale, these media alliances are positioning themselves as credible alternatives to the walled gardens.

However, when it comes to offering the same richness of data as the quadropoly they are falling short. For instance, the Ozone Project only uses navigational data. Compare that to the GAFA brands which offer gender data, interests, friends’ interests and transactions etc as well as navigational data and you can see why advertisers may still not feel brave enough to wean themselves of what many in the industry call the GAFA ‘crack’. Without this depth of data, for some advertisers the argument to shift budget is just not compelling enough.

This is why 2019 is not just going to see greater collaboration in the form of more media alliances, but the creation of a new breed of ‘super alliances’.

A good example of what I mean can be seen with the Gravity Alliance in France. It doesn’t only have large publishers like Le Parisien and Lagardere Active as members, but also two telecom companies (SFR and Orange) and also search businesses, content providers and sizeable retailers (eg Fnac-Darty).

Et voilà! By adding non-media brands to the publishers in the alliance, the Gravity Alliance has been able to build not only scale, but a unique picture of consumers. It provides a real depth and richness that goes beyond the GAFA offering, including contextual, search, geographic, transactional and purchase intention data. The alliance is in control of its own eco system and the members are able to monetise all of their first party data across all of their sites. With over 150 campaigns already executed via the platform and revenues of €5m in its first year, the Gravity Alliance is starting to knock down those garden walls.

This is likely to inspire UK publishers to think beyond straightforward media alliances and explore the super alliance route – either with existing media alliances expanding their membership or with totally new super alliances being launched. We are already in conversation with a number of potential new collaborations around the world.

Super alliances are likely to still be driven by publishers and broadcasters as they have such a wealth of knowledge and expertise in online advertising – and with declining print revenues and traditional TV audiences, the benefits of collaborating to fight the GAFA threat will be high on their agenda. However, bringing in partners from outside the media world is likely to be relatively easy as the impact of GAFA is being seen across so many markets, from telecoms and retail to travel. If a super alliance is a way to compete and also potentially open up an untapped revenue stream, then what’s not to love?

I suspect we won’t just see broad alliances setting up, but also more niche companies coming together to pool their inventory and data to allow heightened targeting. A great example would be the travel sector with travel publications and broadcasters collaborating with travel comparison sites, airlines, online travel agents etc. For the right brands, the kind of data that a ‘vertical’ alliance would create would be extremely powerful.

The biggest sticking points in creating a super alliance has always been the complexity of setting one up and also the issue of traditionally competitive firms having to get in the same room as their rivals.

It’s true that setting up a super alliance will always be an involved process, so bringing in non-media ‘newbies’ will create its own challenges, but the advancements in technology will make it somewhat easier. For a start, the new generation of universal data marketing platforms are built to sophisticated standards to ensure that any worries about data safety and security are met. Plus, just as importantly, they have safeguards in place to make sure that each brand’s data is kept separate at all times so it’s totally safe and GDPR compliant – an absolute prerequisite when competitive brands collaborate.

When it comes to long-held rivalries, potential alliance members are becoming increasingly confident that issues are manageable and far outweighed by the benefits. The vital thing is for them to get terms agreed up front and also for an independent company to be set up to run and market the alliance. This ensures that all members’ interests are equal and no one’s data gets priority. Also, given that what differentiates a super alliance from a traditional alliance is the greater variety of members involved, this will mean fewer direct rivalries.

What will be particularly important in driving this trend in 2019, will be the statistics that prove the worth of the super alliance. When it comes to demonstrating the value to potential alliance members, our own analysis shows that this kind of collaboration grows revenue overall, so any worries about cannibalisation are unfounded. Plus, advertisers should note that agencies like Dentsu Aegis who are using the Gravity Alliance are now going public in saying that the results are particularly good with regard to the visibility rate and also scale, suggesting that campaigns targeted via a super alliance are a viable GAFA alternative.

With this kind of evidence available to create a compelling argument to steal budget, super alliances will provide a real alternative to the big four for advertisers. ‘Super alliances’ in more ways than one.

Feature Image Credit: Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash

By Graeme Finneberg

Graeme Finneberg is country manager, UK at mediarithmics

Sourced from The Drum

In News

The Battle for the Home

October 19, 2018 No Comments

If the first stage of competition in consumer technology was the race to be the computer users went to (won by Microsoft and the PC), and the second was to be the computer users carried with them (won by Apple in terms of profits, and Google in terms of marketshare), the outlines of the current battle came sharply into focus over the last month: what company will win the race to be the computer within which users live?

The Announcements

The first announcement came from Amazon three weeks ago: a new high-end Echo Plus, Echo Dots, several Echo devices for use with 3rd party stereos and speakers (or other Echoes), and an updated Echo Show (i.e. an Echo with a screen). All standard fare, and then things got wacky: the company also announced a microwave, a wall clock, smart plugs, a device for the car, and a TV Tuner/DVR, all with Alexa built-in.

Next up was Facebook: earlier this week the company launched the Portal, a video chat device that can track faces, has Alexa integration, and a smattering of 3rd-party apps likes Spotify. The device was reportedly delayed last spring as the company grappled with the fallout of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and was instead launched in the midst of a data exposure scandal.

Third was Google: yesterday the company announced the Google Home Hub — a Google Home with a screen attached, a la the Echo Show — as well as the Pixel 3 phone and the Pixel Slate tablet, along with far deeper integration between Nest home automation products and the Google Home ecosystem.

And, of course, there is Apple, which launched the HomePod earlier this year, and added a few new capabilities with a software update last month.

Each of these companies brings different strengths, weaknesses, go-to-market strategies, and business models to the fight for the home; a question that is just as important of who will win, though, is to what degree it matters.

Strengths

Each of these companies’ strengths in the home is closely connected to their success elsewhere.

Amazon: Amazon deserves to go first, in large part because they were first: while Google acquired Nest in 2014, Nest itself was predicated on the smartphone being the center of the connected home. Amazon, though, thanks to its phone failure, had the freedom to imagine what a connected home might look like as its own independent entity, leading the company to launch the Echo speaker and Alexa assistant in late 2014.

I was immediately optimistic, in part because the Echo was everything the failed Fire phone was not: its success depended not on the integration of hardware and software, the refinement of which a service company like Amazon is fundamentally unsuited for, but rather the integration of hardware and service. It also helped that Amazon had a business model that made sense: on one hand, the investments in Alexa would pay off with services for AWS, and on the other, Amazon’s goal of taking a slice of all economic activity was by definition centered around capturing an ever-increasing share of purchases made for and consumed in the home, and Alexa could make that easier.

That led to an early lead in the development of the Alexa ecosystem, both in terms of “Skills” and also in devices that incorporated Alexa. As I noted in 2016, this made Alexa Amazon’s operating system for the home, and today Alexa has over 30,000 skills and is built into 20,000 devices.

That, though, makes Amazon’s recent announcements that much more interesting: Amazon isn’t simply content with being the voice assistant for 3rd-party devices, it also is making those devices directly. This, by extension, perhaps points to Amazon’s biggest strength: because Amazon.com is so dominant, the company can have its cake and eat it too. That is, just as Amazon.com is both a marketplace and a channel for Amazon to sell its own products, Alexa is both a necessary component of 3rd-party devices and also a driver of Amazon’s own devices; the company faces no strategy taxes in its drive to win.

Google: Google was very late to respond to Alexa; the original Google Home wasn’t announced until May 2016, and didn’t ship until November 2016, a full two years after the Echo. The company was, as I noted above — and as you would expect for a market leader — locked into the smartphone paradigm; an app plus Nest was its answer, until Alexa made it clear this was wrong.

Google, though, has started to catch up, and the reason is obvious: if a home device is about the integration of hardware and services, it follows that the company that is best at services — consumer services, anyways — would be very well-placed to succeed. The company still trails Alexa by a lot in actions/skills (around 2,000) and 3rd-party devices (over 5,000), but Google’s core functionality is plenty strong enough to sell devices on its own. There are still more Echoes being sold, but Google Home is catching up.

To that end, one of the more interesting takeaways from yesterday’s Google event was the extent to which Google is leaning on its own services to sell its devices: not only did the company tout the helpfulness of Google Assistant, it also prominently featured YouTube, particularly in the context of the Google Home Hub. This is particularly noteworthy because Google handicapped the YouTube functionality of the Echo Show, clearly with this product in mind. Google is also including six months of YouTube Premium with a Google Home Hub; indeed, every Google product included some sort of YouTube subscription product.

Apple: The HomePod is exactly what you would expect from Apple: the best hardware at the highest price. The sound is excellent and, naturally, even better if you buy two. The HomePod is also — again, as you would expect from Apple — locked into the Apple ecosystem; this is from one perspective a weakness, but this is the Strength section, and the reality is that people are more committed to their iPhones — and thus Apple’s ecosystem — than they are to home speakers, meaning that for many customers this limitation is a strength.

Along those lines, Apple is clearly the most attractive option from a privacy perspective: the company doesn’t sell ads, has made privacy a public priority, and is thus the only choice for those nervous about having an Internet-connected microphone in their house.

Facebook: Perhaps the most compelling case for Portal is historical. In the introduction I framed the battle for the home as following the battle for the desk and the battle for the pocket. There were, though, intervening battles that were enabled by those fights for physical spaces. Specifically, the PC created the conditions for the Internet, which in turn made smartphones that could access the Internet so compelling. Smartphones, then, created the conditions for social networking (including messaging) to infiltrate all aspects of life.

Might it be the case, then, that just as the Internet was the key to unlocking the potential of mobile, so might social networking be the key to unlocking the potential of the home? That appears to be Facebook’s bet: sure, the device has some neat hardware features, particularly the ability to follow you around the room or zoom out during a call, but neat hardware features can and will be copied. If Portal is to be a successful venture for Facebook, it will be because the tie-in to Facebook’s social network makes this device compelling.

Weaknesses

As is so often the case, each companies’ weakness is the inverse of their strength:

Amazon: Amazon simply isn’t that good at making consumer products. In my experience its devices are worse than the competition both aesthetically and in terms of hardware capabilities like sound quality. In addition, Amazon’s brute force skills approach — it is on the user to speak correctly, not on the service to figure it out — lends itself to more skills initially but a potentially more frustrating user experience.

Amazon also has less of a view into an individual user’s life; sure, it knows what kind of toothpaste you prefer, but it doesn’t know when your first meeting is, or what appointments you have. That is the province of Google in particular, and also Apple. What is more valuable: being able to buy things by voice, or being told that you best be leaving for that early meeting STAT?

Google: As a product Google’s offering is remarkably strong (there are other weaknesses, which I will get into below). The company is the best at the core functionality of a home device, and it knows enough about you to genuinely add usefulness. Its products are also more attractive and better-performing than Amazon’s (in my estimation).

Google does face questions about privacy: the company collects data obsessively — right up to the creepy line, as former CEO Eric Schmidt has said — and that could be a hindrance to the company’s ability to penetrate the home. That said, Google has so far escaped Facebook-level scrutiny, and wisely excluded a camera from the Google Home Hub. Google knows its advantage is in providing information; it has sufficient other avenues to collect it, without putting a camera in your bedroom.

Apple: Apple, even more than Google, seemed blinded by its smartphone success. This isn’t a surprise: the ultimate point of Android was to be a conduit to Google’s services; it follows, then, that if home devices are about services, that Google would be more attuned to the opportunity (and the threat). Apple, on the other hand, is and always will be a product company; the company offers services to help sell its hardware, not the other way around, and it follows that the company would be heavily incentivized to insist that the iPhone and Apple Watch, which both offered attractive hardware margins and were differentiated by the integration of hardware and software, were better home devices.

That, furthermore, explains Apple’s biggest weakness: the relative performance of Siri as compared to Alexa or Google Assistant. The problem isn’t a matter of trivia, but rather speed and reliability. Siri is consistently slower and more likely to make mistakes in transcription than either Alexa or Google Assistant (and, for the record, more likely to fail trivia questions as well). As always, Apple is the most potent example of how strengths equal weaknesses: just as it was inevitable that a services company like Amazon would be poor at product, a truly extraordinary product company like Apple will face fundamental challenges in services.

Facebook: If the strengths of Facebook Portal were largely theoretical, the weaknesses are extremely real: it is, frankly, mind-boggling that the company would launch Portal given the current public mood around the company. And, to be clear, that mood is largely deserved; I wrote last week about the company as a Data Factory, and one of the telling examples was how Facebook lets advertisers use numbers provided for two-factor authentication for targeting. This strongly suggests that, from Facebook’s perspective, data is data: everything is an input, and while the company may promise that Portal is private, one wonders why anyone would believe them.

That notes, I actually suspect Portal data is private; this seems like more of an attempt to enhance the value of the Facebook graph, and thus the app’s stickiness, than to collect more data. The problem, though, is that Facebook is not in the position to expect nuance, and that this product was launched anyways supports the argument that the company’s executives are indeed out of touch.

Go-to-Market

The various go-to-market possibilities for these four companies could very well have been folded into strengths-and-weaknesses, but it’s worth highlighting on its own, given how important an effective go-to-market strategy is in consumer products.

Amazon: This is arguably Amazon’s biggest strength: not only does the company have direct access to the top e-commerce site in the world and one of the largest retailers period — and, because it is them, can skip a retailer mark-up — it also gets access to prime real estate:

There is not only no question in a consumer’s mind about where to buy an Echo, it is also nearly impossible that they not know about it. Moreover, Amazon has a second trick up its sleeve: it doesn’t stock any of its competitors products, making acquiring them that much more of a hassle.

Google: I highlighted this as a major Google weakness when it launched its #MadeByGoogle line two years ago, but to the company’s credit, it has worked hard to build out its channel. Today Google products are available on most non-Amazon e-commerce sites and in retailers like Best Buy, Target, and Walmart. The company has also invested in advertising to build awareness; there is still a long ways to go, to be sure, and go-to-market remains a Google weakness, but the company has impressed me with its work in this area.

Apple: This is a huge area of strength of Apple as well. The company obviously has a very strong channel, both online and through its retail stores. Both reflect Apple’s biggest strength, which is its brand: there is no company that has more loyal customers, and those customers are tremendously biased to buy an Apple product over a competitors; they are also more likely to be receptive to Apple’s privacy message, perhaps because they care, or perhaps because that is the message that plays to Apple’s strengths.

Facebook: It appears the company learned nothing from the Facebook First flop. The Facebook First, if you don’t recall, was Facebook’s ill-fated phone; it was manufactured by HTC and was discontinued within weeks of launch. There simply was no evidence that customers wanted to pay for a product that was predicated on Facebook integration, and there was certainly no effective go-to-market strategy.

It is hard to see how the Portal will be different: again, the defining feature is that the camera follows you around, a feature that is cool in theory but bizarrely out-of-touch with Facebook’s current perception in the market. Is the company really going to spend the millions necessary to market this thing? And if so, where is it going to be available to purchase? I can see why this product was designed; I see little understanding of how it might be sold.

Business Models

This too ties into strengths-and-weaknesses, but like the go-to-market strategies, is worth calling out in its own right:

Amazon: I explained the company’s business model above: Amazon wants to own the home, because it sells a huge number of items that are used in the home. This is why the company is willing to press its advantage as both a platform and retailer when it comes to Alexa devices: winning has a very direct connection to the company’s ultimate upside.

Google: The business model is a bit fuzzier here: Google makes money through ads sold in an auction where the winner is chosen by the user. That is a model that doesn’t work for voice in particular; affiliate fees are less profitable given that they foreclose the possibility of an advertiser forming a direct relationship with the end user. That noted, the introduction of a visual interface does also offer the possibility of ads.

More noteworthy is the incorporation of YouTube: YouTube has seen the addition of more and more subscription services, including YouTube Premium, YouTube TV, and YouTube Music. All of these work in conjunction with Google’s designs on to the home.

The most compelling business case for Google, though, is the same as it ever was: maintaining a dominant presence in all aspects of a user’s life, not just on the go (in the case of Android) but also in the home provides the data for more effective advertising in the places where it makes sense. No, Google may not sell that many voice ads, but voice interaction will affect what ads are shown in Search, and that is worth an awful lot.

Apple: Apple’s business model is the most straightforward: HomePod is clearly sold at a profit, part of Apple’s strategy of increasing its monetization of its current userbase. This is also a limitation: as noted above, the HomePod is significantly more expensive than any of its competitors.

Facebook: The social network company has the weakest business model story of all: there are no add-on services to sell, and the company has promised not to use the Portal for advertising, for now anyways. The best argument is similar to Google: more data and more engagement means more opportunities to show better-targeted ads on the company’s other products.

Winners and Losers

There are compelling cases to be made for at least three of the four companies:

Amazon: Amazon’s head start is meaningful, and its widespread integration with other products mean it is likely that more people have a device with Alexa integration than not. The company is also highly motivated to win and has the business model to justify it.

Google: I find Google’s case the most compelling. Product is not the only thing that matters, but it is awfully important, and Google is the best placed to deliver the best product. Its services are superior, its knowledge of users the most comprehensive, and its overall product chops have improved considerably. Yes, its go-to-market is worse than Amazon’s and it has a late start, it is still early.

Apple: The loyalty of Apple’s userbase cannot be overstated, particularly when you remember that the company’s userbase are the most affluent customers of all. This makes it difficult to ever count Apple out, even if their product is late and tied to the worst services.

Facebook: It is hard to envision how Portal won’t be a loser: the company has no natural userbase, has a terrible reputation for privacy, and has no obvious business model or go-to-market strategy.

Does It Matter?

There is one final question that overshadows all-of-this: while the home may be the current battleground in consumer technology, is it actually a distinct product area — a new epoch if you will? When it came to mobile, it didn’t matter who had won in PCs; Microsoft ended up being an also-ran.

The fortunes of Apple, in particular, depend on whether or not this is the case. If it is a truly new paradigm, then it is hard to see Apple succeeding. It has a very nice speaker, but everything else about its product is worse. On the other hand, the HomePod’s close connection to the iPhone and Apple’s overall ecosystem may be its saving grace: perhaps the smartphone is still what matters.

More broadly, it may be the case that we are entering an era where there are new battles, the scale of which are closer to skirmishes than all-out wars a la smartphones. What made the smartphone more important than the PC was the fact they were with you all the time. Sure, we spend a lot of time at home, but we also spend time outside (AR?), entertaining ourselves (TV and VR), or on the go (self-driving cars); the one constant is the smartphone, and we may never see anything the scale of the smartphone wars again.

Sourced from STRATECHERY

In News

Google to tech-support scammers: We’re about to get even tougher on your ads

October 12, 2018 No Comments

By Liam Tung

A new verification system for all tech-support advertisers aims to block scammers.

Google is rolling out a new verification system to combat a rise in misleading ads from third-party technical-support services.

Google announced it will implement new restrictions on all tech-support ads after the Wall Street Journal found that fraudsters have been buying ads from Google and posing as authorized service agents for Apple.

“We’ve seen a rise in misleading ad experiences stemming from third-party technical support providers and have decided to begin restricting ads in this category globally,” said David Graff, Google’s director of global product policy.

Google isn’t banning all third-party tech-support ads as Microsoft did for Bing in 2016. But rather it will use a verification program to ensure only legitimate third-party tech-support providers can use its ad network to reach consumers.

The new restrictions on this ad category apply globally while the tech-support verification program will be rolled out in coming months.

SEE: Cybersecurity in an IoT and mobile world (ZDNet special report) | Download the report as a PDF (TechRepublic)

It’s not clear what type of verification program it will roll out, but Google has existing advanced verification programs for local locksmith services and addiction treatment centers to prevent fraud. Google has previously banned some ad categories altogether, including those for short-term payday loans, and more recently bail-bond services.

The verification system was needed because Google found it increasingly difficult to sift out bad actors from legitimate businesses because the fraud takes place away from its platform.

This move could help close off one avenue tech-support scammers use to reach potential victims, but there are plenty more, including cold-calling, support-scam malware and spam with links to support-scam sites.

The overall goal of the scammers is to get victims to call a call center where an operator convinces them to install a remote-access tool, which allows the operator to display bogus error warnings.

Microsoft in 2017 received 153,000 reports from customers across the globe who had fallen for a tech-support scam. That figure was up 24 percent on 2016.

Previous and related coverage

Google robocall scam: We’re suing hustlers who pretend to be us, warns Google

Scam robocallers tell victims: call us now or your Google business listing will labeled closed.

Yet again, Google tricked into serving scam Amazon ads

At the top of search results for “Amazon” was a bad ad, trying to tricking users into falling for a tech support scam.

Windows Chrome users: Tech-support scams try new trick to freeze your browser

Get an ad-blocker if you want to dodge tech-support scammers’ latest rapid-download ruse.

Ransomware, tech-support scams or email fraud: Which cybercrimes cost victims most?

Not all online crimes are equal in their impact.

Microsoft to Windows 7, Windows 8 users: We’re about to end forum tech support

If you have a Windows 7 or 8, Office 2013, or Surface Pro problem, you’ll have to rely on the community for answers.

Microsoft: Tech support scams rose by 24% in 2017, costing some victims thousands of dollars TechRepublic

Social engineering scams make even the best security solutions useless, Microsoft said. It wants industry-wide collaboration to solve the problem.

How to avoid tech support scams CNET

Scammers are getting craftier, according to a new report. Follow these tips to keep your money and identity safe.

By Liam Tung

Sourced from ZDNet

In News

Google might be hiding the fact that its own reviews are shoddy

September 26, 2018 No Comments

By Ethan Wolff-Mann

If you Google “Chiropractor Bethesda Maryland,” you’ll see Google’s famous 10 blue links. But you’ll also see a box with a map — a snippet — at the top with local results, star ratings, and buttons for phone number and directions. Clicking further will show you reviews people left on Google Maps.

Google is ostensibly providing a service to make it easy to get what you want: a chiropractor in Bethesda.

But what if these reviews aren’t particularly good or reliable? This is a question that has come up based on the fact that Google’s library of local reviews is no longer available apart from the Maps platform or the box above search links.

If you Google the exact, unique text of a user review found through the box above in quotes, an interesting thing happens: No results are found, despite the fact that you just saw the text, provided by Google itself in the box above the reviews.

Google appears to have quietly purged its own user-generated review content from its search results.

This is significant, critics of Google say, because it obscures the fact that Google’s search engine judges the company’s own reviews poorly. Google’s search engine ranks content by relevance and quality, and Google’s review content previously showed up deep into the search results, far from the first page of links that takes most of the clicks.

A Google spokesperson disagreed that the review content was “de-indexed,” simply noting that because Google reviews don’t currently live on a web page, they are not displayed as web results.

Given that reviews once showed up in regular Google search results and now do not, it follows that the reviews were moved from a web page to the Maps platform, whose code prevents search engines from crawling it. What was once searchable is now not searchable, something Google did not explain.

As a result, Google reviews do not have to rank highly in search engines. Instead, the Google snippet — the map and reviews box above the standard search result — allows the company to capture clicks that would otherwise flow off the platform to whatever website had the best result in the algorithm made by the search team down the hall at Mountain View deemed as the best.

“When a mom does a search for ‘local pediatrician’ on Google today, instead of being matched with the most relevant information, she’s being redirected into a service with fewer reviews and lower quality information — a product Google’s own meritocratic algorithms deem inferior,” Luther Lowe, SVP of public policy for Yelp, which competes with Google on local reviews, told Yahoo Finance in an email.

Search rankings of Google reviews were poor. Now they don’t exist.

A year ago, Google’s search engine found this review content. But Google’s search algorithms, which judge content based on being “useful and relevant” according to Google, apparently didn’t find Google’s reviews very useful or relevant — so it consistently ranked them poorly.

In to a complaint submitted to Brazil’s Administrative Council for Economic Defense, Yelp, which competes with Google in local search reviews, showed an example by Googling restaurants in Brasilia and filtering results for Google and TripAdvisor to tune out the noise. Google results came up on the eighth, after seven pages of Tripadvisor results.

Other examples Yahoo Finance reviewed showed Google results emerging as deep as the 17th page. Today, no results are found as Google’s search engine skips over them while it crawls the internet.

In a recent tweet-squall, Yelp’s Lowe raised the question of why Google de-indexed reviews. The obvious implication, from the previously dismal search rank, is because Google reviews lag competitors like TripAdvisor and Yelp.

Analysis from Piper Jaffray, which Lowe cites, backs up the implications of Google’s search algorithm in detail. The investment bank found Google reviews were less than a quarter the length, and 25% had no text at all.

Why is Google looking to push its own local reviews so much? The company declined to comment, but our search queries reveal a possible motive: There are a lot of local searches.

Local search makes up a significant amount of the queries that Google fields every day, and keeping users engaged on the platform rather than off it presents opportunities for more monetization. That’s something Google appears to be focusing on, going so far as to track user locations even when user preferences explicitly say not to, according to a recent investigation by the Associated Press. The AP noted that Google was pushing into targeted local advertising using data.

As a paper on similar issues from Harvard Business School’s Michael Luca, Columbia Law School’s Tim Wu, and others noted, “prominently displaying Google content in response to search queries…may reduce consumer welfare if the internal content is inferior to organic search results.”

So what does this mean for you? In layman’s terms: You might get a worse experience if you don’t look past the first thing Google shows you.

Feature Image Credit: A logo is pictured at Google’s European Engineering Center in Zurich, Switzerland July 19, 2018 REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann/File Photo

By Ethan Wolff-Mann

Ethan Wolff-Mann is a writer at Yahoo Finance focusing on consumer issues, retail, personal finance, and more. Follow him on Twitter @ewolffmann.

Sourced from YAHOO! Finance

In News

Google image search is now a design tool

September 19, 2018 No Comments

By Katharine Schwab

Picular analyses the top Google image search results to suggest colours that relate to any topic you search for.

A new design tool called Picular is built around an unlikely data source: Google image search.

Picular is a new color search tool that lets you enter any search term and presents you with a slew of options, basing all of its color choices on what pops up first in Google image search. It’s a color-picker, courtesy of internet hive mind.

For instance, if you type the word “desert” into Picular’s search bar, the tool scrapes the top 20 image results from Google and finds the most dominant color in each image. It presents these results in a series of tiles: A sea of sandy browns and oranges, with a few blues (presumably from the sky) thrown in. Each tile has the color’s RGB code that instantly copies to your clipboard when you click on the tile, making it easy to instantly try out the colors in your work.

Picular is a quick and handy way to get color ideas for a design project, especially because you can type in more emotional, evocative words and see what Google instantly associates with each idea. “Peace” conjures a bunch of cool colors, like grays and blues, with a couple brighter colors in the mix. “Dreamy” is almost entirely blues and purples, while “desire” returns warm reds and browns. “Dynamic” has an eclectic jumble of blue, yellow, and red.

The tool is the brainchild of the Sweden-based digital design studio Future Memories, which now uses the tool on a daily basis. According to the studio, about 15,000 other creatives frequently use the tool to test whether search terms are strongly related to particular colors. Of course, it still requires a designer’s eye and aesthetic to make any final decisions, but Picular serves as a crowd-sourced answer to which colors a certain topic corresponds with.

You can check out the tool here.

By Katharine Schwab

Sourced from Fast Company

In News

The 100 Most Searched Keywords on Google in the Past Year [Infographic]

September 17, 2018 No Comments

By Irfan Ahmad

Search trends are, logically, always changing, which can make it hard to keep up with what’s happening in your industry – and impossible to stay on top of the broader shifts overall.

But knowing the biggest picture can be helpful, not only to see what’s trending based on topical interests, but also based on where things are headed – which is particularly relevant for industry and niche related terms.

To help with this, the teams from Ahrefs and Siege Media have teamed up to analyze the most searched terms on Google among U.S.-based users over the last 12 months (finishing June 1st, 2018).

There are some off ones, but also some interesting trends – check out the full list below.

A listing of the top 100 most search keywords on Google over the last year

A version of this post was first published on the Digital Information World blog.

By Irfan Ahmad

Follow Irfan Ahmad on Twitter

Sourced from Social Media Today

In News

Google to automatically verify your Google Search Console account if you are the property’s owner in Google Analytics

September 14, 2018 No Comments

By Barry Schwartz

Google is opening up Google Search Console automatically, so countless webmasters and site owners will have more access to data and important website alerts.

Google has announced that it will soon automatically verify you for a website in Search Console if you are already a verified owner of the same property in Google Analytics.

This means you don’t have to request manual verification within Google Search Console if you’ve already set up Analytics, and it streamlines the process of giving site owners access to Google Search Console.

Even more importantly, those with Google Search Console access will get emails and notifications of issues in their inboxes. These messages can include manual actions, hacks, WordPress and other CMS upgrade alerts, as well as other notifications — all aimed at helping you keep your website healthy, indexed and ranking.

Google said, “If you don’t want to be verified for Search Console, simply delete the property in Search Console.”

Google explained why Google Search Console is important and useful:

Search Console is a free tool that provides website owners with information which can be critical to performance in Google Search. Once verified, Search Console compiles reports on the website’s performance in Search, including search queries, the website’s rankings, and the number of clicks and impressions. Additionally, there’s information about a site’s indexing, the status of various implemented features on the website, as well as reports and notifications of critical issues.

Here is a screen shot showing the notification when someone is automatically verified via this method:

By Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land’s News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on SEM topics.

Sourced from Search Engine Land

In News

Google Starts To Give Marketers More Access To Data

July 26, 2018 No Comments

By Laurie Sullivan

After years of holding the data close to its vest, Google has begun to give advertisers more data to help them make better decisions and run successful campaigns. Earlier this month, Google confirmed that it would run a small-scale rollout of an Insights analytics report in Google My Business that shows business owners the most popular search keywords that people use to find listings.

On Friday Google announced that the Search Analytics API found in the Search Console now allows advertisers to retrieve 25,000 rows of data per request, up from 5,000 rows previously. Marketers can query all their search analytics data without exceeding their quota by running a daily query for one day’s worth of data.

Marketers need to choose the information requested, such as search types — web, image and video — along with the dimensions such as page, query, country, or device and whether to group results by page or property.

Along with the news, Google published a guide to take marketers through data retrieval. It includes an overview and describes how to group results by page or property and the dos and don’ts for the process, as well as defaults and nuances of how the queries work.

Google also notes that impressions, clicks, position, and click-through rates are calculated differently when grouping results by page rather than by property.

Earlier this week, Google announced the integration of Hotel Ads into the Google Ads platform with the introduction of a new type of campaign and a new dashboard for managing hotel price feeds.

Although Hotel Ads have been around for about eight years — initially in sponsored listings in Google Maps and then in Google Search — they were managed in a separate ad platform.

Now all the data resides in one place. Overall, it means marketers gain more data from one dashboard to support campaigns across the board.

By Laurie Sullivan

Sourced from MediaPost

In News

‘It’s impossible’: Google has asked ad tech firms to guarantee broad GDPR consent, assume liability

July 23, 2018 No Comments

By Tim Peterson

Google has rankled publishers and ad tech firms with its General Data Protection Regulation compliance strategy. But a pledge the company has presented to ad tech firms is considered particularly burdensome.

In the lead-up to the GDPR’s enactment May 25, Google asked ad exchanges and supply-side platforms to guarantee that the publishers whose inventory they help sell have gotten consent across hundreds of vendors for any ads sold through Google’s automated ad-buying platform, DoubleClick Bid Manager, according to three ad tech executives with knowledge of the matter. The EU privacy law requires businesses to justify collecting people’s online data, by getting their consent or through other means.

In signing Google’s consent guarantee agreement, the exchanges and SSPs as well as their respective publishers would assume liability for any corresponding GDPR violations that Google’s DBM is charged with, the execs said. Under the GDPR, any company found violating the law can be fined up to 4 percent of its annual revenue.

Google is asking that the exchanges and SSPs guarantee that their publishers have received consent for each of the roughly 200 vendors on Google’s commonly used vendor list. The ad tech platforms can compromise by creating their own whitelist with a subset of those vendors that they provide to Google, according to the execs. In either case, Google will assume that any exchange or SSP requesting personalized ads from DBM has received consent for all of the vendors on the respective whitelist, the execs said.

The ad tech execs don’t want to assume liability for violations against Google and they don’t think they could honor it in practice. Further, they said Google’s agreement goes against the spirit of the GDPR, which says people have to have the option to withhold consent from individual vendors.

“It’s impossible to get 100 percent consent for every reader for the entire vendor list because most consent management platforms have to, by GDPR law, allow the reader the option to select potentially opting out of specific vendors, and so there’s no way to guarantee 100 percent of readers for 100 percent of the partners or vendors have given consent,” said one of the ad tech execs.

At least one ad tech firm, Sovrn, has declined to sign the agreement. “The changing landscape of GDPR has brought a lot of uncertainty for publishers. Due to the strict requirements around consent in the Google agreement, Sovrn has elected to wait until Google joins the IAB consent framework, which will make it easier for publishers to comply,” Sovrn CTO Jesse Demmel emailed.

“The GDPR is a big change for everyone. We’ve been working hard to make sure that Google complies with its obligations under the GDPR, and to help our partners in their compliance efforts too,” a Google spokesperson said.

The Wall Street Journal reported in May that AppNexus and Teads said they have struck deals with Google to guarantee consent. Reuters earlier this month reported that AppNexus and Rubicon Project have guaranteed to Google that they will only sell inventory to DBM for which publishers have received people’s consent. The articles didn’t say if the agreements were initiated by Google or if the companies and their publishers assumed liability for GDPR violations charged against DBM. Spokespeople for AppNexus and Rubicon Project declined to say if their respective companies signed Google’s agreement and assumed liability. A spokesperson for Teads did not return a request for comment by press time.

If an exchange or SSP declines to sign the agreement, it is limited to only selling non-personalized ads through DBM. Those generic ads generate less revenue for publishers than personalized ads that are targeted to specific audiences based on data collected about them. Some publishers that are heavily reliant on DBM have seen their revenues decline by 70-80 percent since GDPR took effect because they were limited to non-personalized ads, said another ad tech exec. That revenue drop has put pressure on exchanges and SSPs to sign Google’s consent agreement lest their publishers move their inventory to other platforms that can run DBM’s personalized ads on their sites, the second exec said.

Google’s consent guarantee agreement is considered by the ad tech execs to be a stopgap measure until the tech giant adopts the Interactive Advertising Bureau Europe’s and IAB Tech Lab’s GDPR consent framework. Google has said that it plans to complete its integration of the industry framework by August, at which time publishers and ad tech platforms will be able to pass consent to Google on a per-visitor, per-vendor basis.

By Tim Peterson

Sourced from DIGIDAY UK

In News

Microsoft relaunches its news app to take on Google and Apple’s offerings

July 9, 2018 No Comments

By Abhimanyu Ghoshal

Remember MSN.com? It’s still around – and Microsoft is trying to bring it back by relaunching its mobile apps with a new moniker.

Available for Android and iOS, Microsoft News brings you stories from the company’s MSN News effort, that’s been online for several years – with a modern interface that should be familiar to folks who’ve tried Apple News and Google News.

The service brings curated news from more than 1,000 publishers and 3,000 brands. Microsoft says that its AI scans more than 100,000 pieces of content each day, and has over 800 human editors across the globe to select the top stories that its app will surface on your device.

This effort also “powers news on Microsoft Edge, the News app in Windows 10, Skype, Xbox and Outlook.com.” To that end, signing in with your Microsoft account syncs your news preferences across all the devices you’re logged in on.

I spent a few minutes with the Android app, and found the interface to be simple enough to navigate. You’ll initially be prompted to indicate your interests to aid curation, after which you can browse through stories sorted into the categories you selected.

There’s also a section for local news; testing it in my hometown of Bangalore, India, I was served up stories from various outlets covering my city. However, these articles were displayed in an in-app browser, as opposed to the native view.

You can choose between a light and dark theme, and opt to receive notifications for breaking news stories. One feature I missed from Google News is the ‘Full Coverage’ button, which brings up multiple publications’ perspectives on the same topic or event in a single list.

Microsoft says it supports publishers by offering them channels to earn revenue, but it didn’t exactly how that works. It’s likely through partnerships and a bespoke advertising platform (you can see ads in the app which aren’t present in the articles’ original web view); the company noted that it’s “delivered more than $600 million back to our publishers” in the past four years.

While I prefer Google News’ UI, Microsoft’s offering is a formidable rival that arguably does a better job of surfacing local content. You can try it now by grabbing the free app from Google Play and the App Store.

Feature Image Credit: Microsoft