Net Frontier Marketing

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Mid June 2007. Google Slaps again. This time, it’s affiliate marketers on Adwords.

As per Google’s unwritten policy, there is no warning and no explanation.

“You’ve done something wrong. You’ve been doing it for some time. Just today, we’ve decided to inflict severe penalties on your campaigns. We haven’t emailed you because actions speak louder than words, and when you log into your account, you’ll be hard pressed to miss the fact we’ve multiplied your advertising costs by 20.”

Now have fun guessing what the problem is.

One poster on Webmaster World writes:

“Never in the history of advertising has the medium set the rules.”

And from here stems the real problem. Never before has an advertising medium had to set the rules. Never before has advertising been a brand rather than a simple commercial vehicle.

Consider newspaper ads, billboards and TV spots. All of them are interruptive. When you read an article in said newspaper, the ads are there, displayed in all their glory. You do not have a choice but to consume them. Whether consciously or not, they leave a trace on your psyche.

Whether you look at them or not, they exist on that piece of paper distributed to millions of consumers. The job is done and paid for.

As a search engine user, when you query Google, your consumption of advertising eventually becomes a choice that you make.

Oh, those are ads?

That was the reply when I explained a facet of affiliate marketing in very simple terms to an uncle at a family function. The new surfer is a goldmine to Google. In many cases, they don’t know that the results on the right are paid advertising.

They eventually figure this out and their experience with the quality of the sites advertised will dictate their future behavior for years to come.

Chances are Google is hurting right now.

Earnings are up. Ad sales are up. Online promotion will only expand in the future.

New computers are connected to the internet everyday. New minds exposed. But what if existing data suggests surfers enjoy a brief love affair with AdWords only to develop near total ad blindness over a short period of time. One can only assume that is the case.

Once the load of newcomers being thrust into the Google pool reaches critical mass, the money source becomes non-renewable unless a favorable experience is created for information seekers clicking on ads.

Google depends on you to make a decision to consume their advertising. If you don’t elect to spend your time eating their ads, they don’t get paid. Exposure is not enough, participation is necessary.

Allowing the results to be flooded with thin affiliate sites sends the following message:

“Only click here if you want to buy something. Information seekers not welcome.”

And that is a calamity of epic proportions. The clearer the line between organic and sponsored results becomes, the less money Google makes.

Some affiliates were outraged at the re-slap, asking “why doesn’t Google mind its own business and let the consumers decide which ads they want?”

That’s exactly what Google is doing.

It may be tempting to think some form of natural selection in advertising should suffice to weed out the weak from the strong. That is not the case when the ad vehicle is also a brand.

The battle is a steep one. The entire business model depends on the long term willingness of the individual to consume commercial messages.

Welcome to the next frontier.

Popularity: 3% [?]