Google’s Ad Scan: Stupidity, Madness or Mere Insanity?

The blog Silicon Valley Insider has an extraordinary item today about Google’s latest ad scheme, which works this way:

1. Advertiser buys ad in newspaper; a Google barcode appears on the ad

2. For reasons unrevealed and hard to imagine, a newspaper reader wants so badly to have the ad on her mobile phone that she takes a snapshot of the barcode with her device (she has previously installed special software to permit this)

3. Her mobile phone takes her directly to an online version of the ad–which presumably has more value in mobile, digital form than it does in its mobile, analog print version. Maybe it’s more information, or a chance to sign up for, oh, I don’t know, an e-mail newsletter or a sweepstakes (which is to say an e-mail newsletter)

4. The newspaper advertiser can now capture data about that potential customer which is uncaptureable in a print environment

5. Google sends the cell phone user an e-mail message, which she is invited to print out and attach to her forehead with duct tape. The e-mail says “I Am Verry Stupid.”

Actually, I made up No. 5.

I know, I know, they do this printed-bar-code-and-cell-phone thing in Japan. But in Japan they also watch those game shows where people hilariously incur significant internal organ damage by competing in contests involving mud, spinning platforms and immovable objects. “I Am Verry Stupid” indeed.

Business Rule No. 1: If you want to get consumers to do something that benefits you (like give you money, or merely identify yourself as a reader of an ad so someone else gives you money), you have to offer them something of value in return. This “value proposition” seems to be missing in this Google scheme.

Please, right now, close your eyes. Try to imagine seeing an ad in the newspaper so utterly compelling that you’re willing to stop whatever you’re doing, take out your cell phone, and view another version of that ad–maybe an interactive one, just like on the web!–in the tiny screen of your cell phone.

I know, I can’t either.

I prefer to view a money scheme this spectacularly wrong-headed as another hopeful sign that Google has entered its Late Empire phase, when the emperors drink arsenic at orgies while the lean and crafty barbarians consolidate control of the provinces and plan the ultimate pillage.

Or maybe (alas) it’s just another sign that Google has so much money now it can make big bets on slim chances and put nothing more at risk than a quarterly earnings rounding error.

In any case, if you know anyone who works on this particular project at Google, please send them the following message as an e-mail and ask them to tape it to their foreheads.

I AM VERRY STUPID

User-Generated Content: Can You Find the Pill Shill?

New comScore data suggest that about 30 percent of women consider user-generated content on the web when making decisions about birth control methods. Twenty-three percent said they wouldn’t consider UGC, and 46 percent said they’d consider it but haven’t tried the chat/forum method.

The data make sense. With a whole new wave of birth control products on the market—including drugs that permit women to have menstrual periods monthly, quarterly, or even once per year (!)—women are checking with those who have been there/done that for some straight talk.

UGC can let sisters do it for themselves—at least with a new form of a product women have been using for years, and is heavily advertised with direct to consumers suggesting it’s a lifestyle choice rather than a medical decision.

The survey, like so many, was done on behalf of pharma companies. The back story raises familiar questions about UGC with consumer products

Hmmm…pharma companies learn that a majority of women either are or would consider UGC to make decisions. So let’s see, what’s a more effective method of reaching these women–more direct-to-consumer advertising or hey, maybe a posse of online “brand ambassadors” and “superusers” who slyly create UGC on behalf of drugs?

The implication, well known to students of 2.0 marketing, is clear. In the world of UGC, it can be hard to tell the difference between a girlfriend and a pill shill.

Click Fraud: Not Just a Scam, a Sport!

An article today in MediaPost today reports that a company called Click Forensics estimates that 28 percent of the clicks on those Google and Yahoo text ads found next to search results, blogs and various web sites are fraudulent. This is to say the are clicked on with malicious intent, in order to generate revenue for the websites that host the ads.

To vastly oversimplify a very complicated process of auctions, algorithms and audacity: Let’s say an advertiser agrees to pay Google 15 cents for every click that comes from its ad to its site. Google drops the ads on sites or search results whose content corresponds to the material in the ad. Google collects 15 cents times 120 jillion for each click to the ad, or whatever its current reach is. If the ad is on a blog or web site, Google gives (say) 5 cents to the site for each click. Google keeps a dime. Advertiser gets qualified leads. Win-win-win.

Unless it turns out those clicks are generated by robots or stooges in the employ of blogs or websites that host the ads, trying to steal from advertisers 5 cents at a time–which, the report suggests, happens with 28 percent of all such clicks.

As someone with no investment in the Adwords game–and who rarely clicks on those ads–I’m not sure what all this means to the larger world of commerce. But I offer this curious observation: When the MediaPost story on click fraud showed up in my Gmail inbox, the ads below appeared next to it. I invite you to click them all–either to strike a blow for purity in web commerce or, if you like, purely for sport. It certainly won’t make me–or cost me–any money.

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Web 2.D’oh! Round-Up, Vol. VIII

If it’s Friday, it’s time again for our weekly whiskbrooming of the dust, detritus and details that fluttered onto the floor of the 2.0ffice recently.

Dude, Where’s My . . .Self-Respect?

In a play to enter a tragically underserved market on the web–teenaged and young adult males–the folks at Viacom announced that they will next year consolidate a number of guysites into something called spike.com.

If the current SpikeTV site is any indication, the Viacommers have Rupert Murdoch’s AskMen.com site beat in the how-low-can-you-go competition. By a long shot. To suggest some Spike content is soft-core porn would be generous indeed. [Click on Homepage Top 100 if you don't believe me.] By comparison, AskMen comes off as downright gentlemany. Stay on the high road, Rupe!

Video That’s Not Hideo

Here’s something I don’t see very often: Video that serves a purpose on the Web. One of my nerdy-favorite sites, lifehacker.com, this week posted a round-up of well-done do-it-yourself videos. A favorite is “How to Buy a Car Without Getting Screwed.” [Though at 5:53 it breaks my 2-minute rule.]

One of the scariest is–I am not making this up–”How to turn a flashlight into a handheld burning laser.” After posting, the video sprouted this useful bit of essential derriere attire: UPDATE: Several readers rightly point out that your burning handheld laser could pose a safety risk to humans, especially when pointed at eyeballs. Watch your kids, proceed at your own risk, treat as you would a weapon, etc. Thank you.

Genuinely Interesting Item of the Week

Don’t miss the list of finalists in the Online News Association’s annual Online Journalism Awards.  [As with most such competitions, the finalists' list is always richer than the final list of winners.]  

Leaders in the obscure-but-great division include:

NewsOK.com , the site of an group of Oklahoma media companies that’s far more sophisticated than most of its coastal brethren

HoopGurlz [resist nanny-nanny-boo-boo at Don Imus here] 

Assignment: Guatemala, a very ambitious multimedia investigation into an unsolved group of three murders, produced by the tiny (though Gannett-owned) Journal News of the Lower Hudson Valley. [Oddly, this feature is listed in the "service journalism" rather than "investigative journalism" category. Explanation, anyone?]

CNet.com’s “Vista for the Masses,” a full-out, scramble-the-jets, spare-no-cost, hose-the-competition report on Microsoft’s new operating system.

Everybody knows the big media brands and what they can do online. The pleasure of clicking through this list is to see how many truly remarkable obscurities are out there–and too often overlooked.

And finally, our Noted Without Comment feature

Zappos Targets the Shoeless Flier

The Future of News: Just Add Money

What with this being back-to-school day, I hate to start the week with a reading list. But it’s worth spending the time (3:30, I just clocked it) to read a column by Dave Morgan, chairman of the advertising firm Tacoda, in which he planks out ideas about the future of big city daily newspapers. Check out the comments too (another 4:00, including reflection).

There is plenty of blue-sky thumb-sucking (to coin a phrase) about the future of news, but Morgan’s vision is provocative. If I had to summarize it on a sticky note, it would be something like, ”an always-on, multi-device, highly fragmented news ecology of very demanding micro-audiences.” 

I’d probably stick on another note which said, “How the hell is anybody going to make money at this?”

Morgan –conveniently! — has an answer. Tacoda is a leading behavioral targeting firm. These are the folks who put clients’ ads in front of Web users based not on demographics or target audience of the site, but by demonstrated individual behaviors: You know, people who own Ford 150 trucks and use Verizon Wireless and drink Budweiser and spend a lot of time playing fantasy football on Friday nights.

Which is to say: Morgan’s company is eerily well positioned to thrive in an always-on, multi-device, highly fragmented news ecology of very demanding micro-audiences. 

The value in Morgan’s viewpoint is precisely its self-interested nature. Most blue-sky thumb-sucking ™ about the future of news is being done by folks on the supply side of the business: The people who make the content. Their vision of the future is eerily self-interested too: Trusted brands will matter. Journalism matters. There will always be economic value in editorial standards and judgments. Build quality content and the advertising will come. 

So it’s useful to hear the views of someone who sits on the other side of the transaction, who has no loyalty to trusted media brands, editorial standards or, for that matter, journalism. From Morgan’s side of the economic equation, what matters is being able to serve ads to the right people in the right place in the right time.

As information monopolies implode, there’s little doubt that the power to shape the future of media lies in the hands of those who figure out how–to draw on a phrase from the heyday of newspaper journalism–to “follow the money.” Newsfolk, who are in danger of imagining a future based on sentiment and habit, would do well to pay attention to those whose careers are devoted to that.

Which they just might: Morgan is gathering his ideas at the request of the National Newspaper Association, which has sought diverse perspectives of the future for a visioning project. I insist on being encouraged. 

Ask.com: Great TV Commercials. Bad Video Search

If you haven’t had the pleasure of viewing Ask.com’s television commercials, visit this Ask.com corporate video site and take a look. The twerp-Broadway-style Chicks with Swords and the domestic faux-tear-jerker Daddy are my favorites. Their self-deprecating attitude, plus their over-the-top humor, make them very effective brain-Velcro.

Do they “work,” which is to say, draw people from the death grip of Google to the reinvented, now-owned-by-Scary-Barry-Diller Ask.com search site? Beats me.

The more interesting point is that the company is using an old-style mass medium (broadcast TV) to draw people to its Web service, which in turn directs people to a whole variety of media, including, increasingly, video.

Which makes it curious that the Ask.com service’s much-publicized 3-D search makes it so hard to find videos. 

For instance, if you have a hard time playing those commercials from the site listed above–which presents them only in QuickTime format–let’s try the ol’ Ask.com search engine to see if we can find Flash versions.

Type ”Ask.com commercials” in the elegantly simple search box, look for the “video” icon. . . and it’s not there. The options facing you on that elegantly simple interface are ”Web,” “Images,” “City,” “News” and “Blogs.” To find “Video” you have to click on the little “More” arrow above the search box and then click on “Video” on the little drop-down. 

This is the strange thing: Put the same search in Google and on the first page of results you’ll find a link to a YouTube version of one of the ads. Click on it and the video appears right within the search results page.

Ask.com staff: Jakob Nielsen on line 1!

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