Month: November 2006

The battle between Microsoft, Google and Yahoo for the advertising market has made visible the way marketing will be done in the near future. Making a follow-up of my last post, I wanted to point out the main drivers of this Battle for Titans.

WiFi access: the idea is to offer free access to internet for all. Google has already fully covered the US city Mountain View and is pursuing San Francisco in a battle with Microsoft. Lots of companies like “The cloud”, Boingo, Earthlink, FON, among many others are creating huge WiFi networks, covering entire cities and making partnerships with these giants. But obviously there’s a business model behind, and is “Targeted advertising”. This kind of ads would provide relevant content and services, including weather, news, and local government services, as well as restaurant, nightlife, and movie listings. People has to accept advertisements instead of paying for the access, but this time, they know your location and they can offer to their business customers in this way a much efficient marketing campaigns.

Free cell phones: Recently in an interview, the Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt, stated the idea that cell phones should be free for everyone. The devices should be paid fully, as well as internet access, by targeted advertising. This is exactly what I was talking about in my last post, they know your interests, your location, and so, they can make really sharp efficient ads that could result interesting to you. Let’s make an example; you’re going to the supermarket to buy the groceries. In an association with the supermarket and Google, they have the history of the things you buy and a way to reach you; so, you enter the supermarket and immediately after, you receive a message saying: “Your favorite Swiss chocolates are in offer today” or “The products a, b and c, that you normally buy have a 15% discount for you today”.

With these new marketing approaches, you just have to correlate information to get incredibly efficient services. Right now we can just see the top of the iceberg, but below, there are ideas that will appear before our eyes in a vertiginous speed.

Google has changed the way how advertising works in the world. When you want to advertise a product or make branding (show up your company name to the market), you have to think who is the people who might be interested and where are they. Well, a recent study in Spain showed that the most popular activity in the internet is search, so where better to advertise than in the search engines?

But people don’t just use the internet, they listen to the radio, watch TV, read the newspaper etc… and Google is everywhere! Just check this out:

Internet: With Google you, not only, can post your texts ads in the results of searches. You can also advertise in millions of internet content sites that make part of its advertising network. You can use from the most primitive text ads to full video and interactive commercials.

Radio: In the last year, Google bought a radio broadcasting advertising system and has made several partnerships with radio stations to transmit live ads having total control of them.

Newspapers: The recently launched service, where printed spaces of the most important newspapers of the world are placed in bid directly from the Google website, fosters a totally new way of business for print newspapers, magazines, etc…

TV: The acquisition of youtube.com and the plan to make it available on mobile devices, in addition to the plan of transmitting popular TV shows on its Google Video.

Google is moving at the same pace as people and technology evolves. They understand that innovation is the key to maintain their leadership and even gain more market share. They have re-invented the way marketing is done and they will continue doing so.

What can we expect in the future? Personalized advertising also in the real life?

Imagine just that, as cell phones, in the near future, people will have devices that show the position of each person in the earth. Say a GPS. Google earth will know all the businesses and shops placed in your surroundings as well as your interests (because they register every search you make, the news you read, etc…). So, they could send and ad, in the radio station that you are hearing (only to you) saying, “hey! These red nice shoes that you wanted to buy are right across the next corner!”

We are not so far from that, it is not fiction; it’s just the evolution of advertising.