Google research -- search vs. print?

From AdWeek.com: "Having succeeded in siphoning ad spending from consumer publications, Google is training its sights on trade publishers. The Mountain View, Calif., company undertook a study with Millward Brown to show how search advertising is more effective than ads in trade magazines and other traditional business-to-business media."

Speaking personally (reminder: nothing I guest blog here should be viewed as speaking on behalf of ABM), I regret it whenever research gets re-cast by writers feeling the need to set up a competition between two types of media. "Search vs. Print" may make for a good story angle, but it misses the point. Print PLUS Search is the way business-to-business marketers should be thinking.

Also, the notion of Google "siphoning off" ad revenues is, perhaps, conventional wisdom, but I have not seen the research proving that hypothesis. One can make an argument that Google has created a new revenue stream of local, small business advertising, that was not going into traditional advertising (other than, perhaps Yellow Pages), but can this be construed as "siphoning off"? (Besides, I just read the book Freakonomics, so I'm questioning all such market-based "conventional wisdom" )

Also, it must be noted, when it comes to B2B advertising online, the Google business model -- how it makes its money -- is the "advertising sales agent" business model. Their success in this arena is dependent on them generating revenues FOR online publishers, not in "siphoning off revenues" from them.

For those reasons, I believe Google's research is not actually directed at marketers, but to B2B publishers in support of thier efforts to serve as the online advertising agent for business-to-business media. Thus, another reason this is not a Google vs. traditional B2B media story. Again, it should be noted that a large percentage (perhaps a majority) of the revenues Google will generate in the B2B space, will flow into the coffers of B2B media companies, thus another reason to NOT view this news strictly in terms of a competition.

Note of transparency: My firm participates in the Google Adsense program and receives a check from them each month. It is revenue that I view as incremental, not threatening.

Second note of transparency: Google is an associate member of ABM.

(posted by Rex Hammock)

Comments

[Prescott Shibles]

Coming from the search engine industry to B2B publishing, I'm a bit biased on the topic, but I'm amazed at those that don't think of Google as an ally.

Google is the number one referring site for almost every site that I'm aware of. In addition to traffic, they also provide publishers with an easy way to monetize Web pages. Google and B2B publishers are complementary marketing tools. Google casts a wide net segmenting on keywords while publishers can get into exceptionally small niches and add value by segmenting users based on industry-specific demographics. The two work together exceptionally well.

Great post, Rex!

[Rex Hammock]

Thank you, Prescott. Google has to index content from some source, and send those seeking information to content created by others -- and those others are B2B publishers. And, Google is willing to provide advertising from their inventory to help publishers monetize that content. So, like you, I'm not ready to demonize them...yet. (I have, actually, protested against some things they've done with their Toolbar, but that's on another topic.) Another note of transparency: I'm in the midst of developing a really cool search function on one of our properties and have been evangelizing B2B search advertising opportunities since 1999 (and, unfortunately, like a lot of folks, have the scars to prove it).

[Paul B. Beatty]

Most business to business magazines have the data to build their own "seach engine".The magazine and its readers do not need a "google".It is one more case of taken advatage of the print puls web power. The magazines "search engine" is a online editorial arm of the magazine.Publisher of print must look for ways to use online not sell against it.Online managers must look for ways to use print not sell against it.

[Prescott Shibles]

Rex,

I just read min's B2B today (7/25), and saw an article on this subject again. I actually posted some thoughts on competing with Google on my blog. I just read your response to my original comment, and I'm really hoping you do something spectacular with smallbusiness.com. I think you've got some cool ideas from what I've seen so far. Keep us posted on what's going on there!

-prescott

[Josh Gordon]

A word from the street. I recently lost a satisfied banner advertiser on one of my email newsletters who shifted his online money to "search." I recently failed to get another online ad campaign funded because the online money was all going to "search." I do not know how much of our B-to-B $ is heading to Google etc. But I recently started asking my advertisers if they are spending money on search. I was surprised to find that most are. If you don't ask if money you are not getting is going to search, you will not know it's going there.

Josh Gordon

[Prescott Shibles]

Josh!

So good to see fellow Primedia Business folk on this blog. For those of you who don't know Josh, I'd definitely give merit to his comments. He's an outstanding sales person with a lot of experience selling online.

Thanks!
-p

[Paul Beatty]

Josh:
The question is what does the advertiser use to stimulate them to a search? What does it cost to be listed in the search ? What is the ROI? If you had one dollar to spend in b2b media to sell a product how would they spend it?Selling a page of advertisng does not stand alone.It takes a package to prove ROI.
Paul Beatty

[Andy Black]

Will Social Networks and Vertical Search combine to challenge Google?

Publishers and advertising agencies have a very difficult challenge ahead as traditional “horizontal” media like newspapers, TV channels and magazines see their traditional demographics and advertising revenue streams fragmented by the increasing preference of consumers for online access and the huge presence of Google eroding their audiences and potential future revenues.

Perhaps they should remember the words of Sun Tsu, who once said: “When the enemy is too strong to attack directly, then attack something he holds dear. Know that in all things he cannot be superior. Somewhere there is a gap in the armour, a weakness that can be attacked instead.”

Google’s major strength - the clean search box and the ease of use, commoditised ad revenues, perhaps masks its principal weakness. As media content and advertising revenues fragment to serve thousands and thousands of “vertical” online communities based on lifestyle or profession, Google may suddenly seem standardised, commoditised and lacking a sense of unique community. Is Google becoming Wal-Mart, while vertical communities may prefer Harrods?

Whilst “horizontal” media companies are similar to supermarkets, specialist professional “vertical” publishers are very specific in serving niche communities with totally relevant content and requirements. However, the publisher’s principal operating difficulty in becoming adaptive to this asymmetric Web 2.0 opportunity is that most tend to run each of their print, exhibition and online titles/businesses as separate profit and loss items on their balance sheet. As a by-product the vast majority tend not to have a centralised IT infrastructure or the human IT skill sets to manage a large scale data centre or web spidering facility - the prerequisites needed to datamine and aggregate open source, user generated and blog content to create vertical slices of the Web that are relevant for their audiences. Publishers will also need to integrate this content into the online extensions of their print brands and thereby allowing advertisers the opportunity to target high value communities. In addition, the datamining, crawling and hosting to identify relevant open source content will also need to be a continual process due to the continual growth of user generated and open source content.

Convera have two very large data centres, an extensive web spidering capability and a web index. Convera are now partnering with a significant number of specialist B2B publishers to create a range of vertical websites for specific professional communities. The first example of this is Searchmedica.com with UBM.

In building the deep vertical search portals, the key is to reach into the specific professional community in a number of ways. First, you can combined the trade publisher’s knowledge and contacts in the profession with community appeals that engage the specific audience in a way that general search cannot, and also by taking special care to use the taxonomies common to the targeted profession in organizing search results so that the user feels more at home and among peers. Building a good vertical engine can be costly and time consuming, and getting a critical mass of users to de-Google their search habits into more specialized engines is potentially a tough sell. However, in tests with focus groups from different professional communities to test these vertical search properties against Google, the results are hugely encouraging.

In building the beta test sites, the specialist publishers are providing Convera with “white lists” of data sources online and websites that would be most relevant to its readers so that the searches are restricted to reliable and trusted information. Publishers are also securing agreements with owners of key proprietary content not normally crawled by Google by leveraging some of its contacts and resources so that Convera can crawl and deliver some of their proprietary content.

Another key consideration is getting the user community engaged in the process as co-developers. No matter how bad the results at Google or Yahoo may be for a given professional segment, the interface is familiar and the destination is always at hand. Getting users to think of a specialized brand as the go-to place for business information is the challenge.

A number of publishers are actively assessing the potential of adding social networking to the mix in order to get professionals interacting with each other and adding weekly podcasts by industry experts on issues affecting the community - these additional services will create more community loyalty and also additional advertising and sponsorship opportunities.

The publishers can also use their print titles to drive the audience to the new online areas and this will also assist the transition of their high value print ad revenues to online. Publishers also have exhibitions, seminars, events and email newsletters to assist this transition - and recent research suggests that professional communities will actively attend seminars and events to meet peers and other members
of their community. The theory goes that once you get some professionals involved then the viral mechanism or behavioural “Hive Mind” also kicks in and professional workers start referring to the vertical portal as a community source. It is also allows advertisers and public relations organisations access to a clearly defined, affluent, influential and stable audience.

Google does not allow you to have a beer with a potential business partner - it doesn’t have that sense of community. But Google is fighting back - the recent launch of Google Custom Search and acquisition of teenage social network sites indicates they are aware of their weakness - but specialist publishers see this as a Trojan Horse. Social networks for teenagers are highly transient and target a demographic that is volatile, unpredictable and has a low level of disposable income - whereas a social network alongside a vertical search service for 22,000 bio-chemists, 55,000 UK GP’s, 55,000 insurance risk assessors or 120,000 US psychiatrists is stable, affluent and attractive for advertisers.

[Build An eBook Empire]

I choose Search!
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