Comments on: Google – can I count on you ?

By: Dan Dickinson

Dan Dickinson — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 16:06:55 +0000

Colin,

Sure, lots of people click and don’t buy, but I don’t imagine it’s any bigger a percentage than the similar numbers generated by ‘traditional’ marketing.

By: Colin

Colin — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 04:34:48 +0000

@Dan … thats it. We can’t account for the masses, the ‘miley cyrus’ stuff.
I remain curious though whether the cyrus people are actually making purchases after they click. Is there a boomerang effect if [huge if] it turns out people are clicking and not buying.

By: Claus

Claus — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 15:08:50 +0000

Google has paying customers, all the clients that pay for their ads to be shown.

Advertising by using Google’s text ads is much more effective then most other ways to advertise on the net.

And I agree with Dan – Google’s product is search and by offering highly relevant search results they offer an attractive environment for advertising.
Wether they will be around in a few years depends on if they continue to offer the best user experience in search.

By: Dan Dickinson

Dan Dickinson — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 14:45:03 +0000

I think that if you asked Google they wouldn’t say their product is advertising. Their product is search. They’ve just found a way to make money off of adwords and the like, but the service they provide is the search itself. It so happens that they’ve stumbled on a way to generate substantial amounts of revenue from contextual ads — which is not the same thing as traditional web advertising, obviously — which lets them subsidize their other offerings. I think they could easily go to a more overt freemium model for their online services like gmail or google docs, which presumably would satisfy the idea of a more traditional business model, but they don’t have to.

I share your opinion of online advertising, but as you said, we’re not the norm. There’s a difference between “appeals to you” and “appeals to the masses.” This is the only possible way I can rationalize the existence of reality TV and Miley Cyrus.

By: Ron Shevlin

Ron Shevlin — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 14:32:35 +0000

I said this 9 years ago about the dot com boom, and I think it’s just as relevant today: For all these start-ups to succeed, online advertising will have to account for a greater percentage of GNP than financial services and healthcare — combined.

By: sir slur

sir slur — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 12:08:07 +0000

i agree that advertising should not be how you intend to make money. i am a firm beliver of selling a product or service. preferably both. too many people lose faith in a startup because their adsense doesn’t make them enough money to cover their development cost (software).