The 3 companies have allowed ad company, Phorm, to access customers browsing records in order to serve relevant ads to any website publisher wishing to join the scheme.  The proceeds would then be shared between Phorm, the 3 Internet providers and the website publisher.

From the article:

A marketer that wants to reach wealthy golfers, for instance, would not have to restrict itself to advertising on golf sites. Because the ad system would track golfers’ Web habits, it could follow them to other sites and show them golf-related ads there, too.

Queue Homer-esque response, “ewwwwww”!

OK, I have mixed feelings about this.  As a website owner, SEO and marketing professional having revenue and advertising alternatives is pretty good, but I really don’t know how comfortable I am being tracked at that level.  Although the article does say that customers of the ISPs involved will be able to opt out of the scheme (and will only be tracked by unique ID and not personal information), it still doesn’t sit very well with me.

Esther Dyson (tech analyst and investor) noted;

Bombarding consumers with more and more ads, even “relevant” ones, risks sending them to social networking services and other places on the Internet where advertisers find it harder to reach them.

That’s a fair point to a certain degree, although I think if Esther had more knowledge of the SEM industry she might consider whether or not social network traffic is that hard to reach for advertisers.

Small guy might be missing out here

Just going through the signup process at Phorm, I see they start their publisher info request form with traffic details – smallest on the list is 500k – 1 million – so it would seem they are targeting higher traffic sites or possibly networks.  I sent in an enquiry and will post back with some info when it arrives.

The demo seems quite interesting from an advertising point of view though.  The example given on the Phorm site explains the process for advertisers.  You can for example, choose to display ads for a Paris hotel only to users who had browsed French travel sites using the keywords “France” and “Paris” (on page), at least 3 times in the past 30 minutes.

That opens up a world of options for advertisers – instead of customising a few campaigns with vague targeting on Adwords, you can customise entire campaigns to target users at different stages of the decision making process.  Frequent browsing could equate to a greater intent to buy – therefore you can target your juicy sales pages to these people.  On the other hand, infrequent browsing could indicate an interest in a new area, allowing you to target more subtle, informational pages at potentially new customers.

It also means we could target different types of customers who are looking for the same service.  A potential new client with no previous SEO services and an existing client of a competitor looking to change supplier could very well browse different types of sites, looking for different types of information – why not tailor campaigns specifically to each customer type?

However, the one constraint with a system like this is scope.  They have the technology to run the system on – they have the user data to sell to advertisers – do they have the content network to justify such a large remit?  That’s where small website publishers could really make or break the campaign.

Last note on this – one cool feature is that publishers can dictate a threshold fee for their ad real estate (i.e. a minimum price advertisers pay to advertise on the site).  I like the sound of that.

Any thoughts on either being able to track and market users at this level, or being tracked and marketed to like this?

Scott

Shocker!

Let’s have a think about this.  You are making $5k / $10k / $20k / $50k / $100k a MONTH by spamming the company that is paying you.  Collectively, you and the other people like you are taking 10’s of millions (probably more) of advertiser spend from businesses because you spam Google and prevent them from achieving good organic results without pro SEO help (forcing them into Adwords).  You are also probably the person that moans regularly about how much money Google is making.

Yet you seem surprised, and in cases, disgruntled that this situation has popped up.

Newsflash – everyone else saw this coming a mile off and it’s long overdue.

Credit where credit is due though – I do have a lot of respect for some MFA producers – they do it well and I suspect that most not only have great SEO knowledge but a few of the greats are pretty damn good businessmen as well.

But seriously – this was always going to happen and most people know that.  Just like the good life of 5 years ago where you could grab number 1 rankings in Google overnight are gone, this honeymoon period for a lot of people is coming to an end.

I think it’s a good thing.  Not that I have any “ethical” objection to web spam which seems to be the main argument against it (within the SEO community) – it’s more that a lot of legit businesses have ended up having to fork out much more money on PPC spend just to keep up and I think this is a little unfair on them, especially small businesses.

It was always a short term strategy and the savvy webmaster should have known this and prepared as such – even if they didn’t see that particular business model lasting, then they should (and I believe most will have) seen that it needs to be integrated into a longer term strategy.

But why did Google take so long to act?  MFA sites are as old as Adsense and lots of people were shouting for Google to make this move as long as I can remember.

Perhaps it is only just starting to hurt Google’s bottom line – maybe the general perception of Adsense has become so low that Google needed to make the move now?  Or maybe they just loved the huge influx of spam data to allow to prepare for the next level of the search engine wars?

Who knows, but I’m glad this move has come.  I don’t expect it will have a serious negative impact on many people (after all, most of the people involved have made a serious amount of cash from it) and will begin to have a positive affect on other businesses (lowered PPC costs).

Where next for the full time spammers?  Maybe they will go legit or maybe we’ll see some of this cash being invested in serious online ventures?  Probably most will retire or find another way of monetising web spam, but I would prefer to see them invest in longer term ventures – I think it’s better for the web and better for the SEO industry that way.

MG

Most SERPs relating to areas that Google have a business interest already display Adwords for the service, but this is one of the first times I’ve seen an additional snippet advertising the service.  Plus it’s also unusual for Google to include branding (blogger logo) in otherwise text based SERPs.

An interesting change – perhaps just a test, but could lead on to more commercial Google properties being advertised in SERPs outwith the Adwords model.

What strikes me is that with the recent debates about the Pay Per Post model of link building (let’s not mince about – it is link building, regardless of how the facilitating companies choose to position themselves!), and FTC requirements for disclosure, surely Google should be under some kind of requirement to disclose the fact that they own Blogger.

Keep in mind, although we (in the SEO industry) are more than aware of Google’s various acquisitions over the years, the average user may not be.  So advertising a “tip” on ALL “blog” and “weblog” related searches may seem like more of a recommendation than a promotion.  Certainly a dive into a very grey area.

What do you think?  I know a few people I chat to about these things (that aren’t instantly bored my choice of profession!) don’t really look at SERPs in the way that I do.  Most will look at the results and perceive them to be in some order or relevance and importance (and not simply as an easily manipulated set of data as I personally view them).  And as such, I would assume that these type of users would perceive any information outside normal and sponsored results as being a message from Google (or any search engine they are using).

If Windows pops up a “tip” for me, I know (as does the average user) that it is for usability purposes.  I would suspect a lot of people apply the same logic to stuff they read on websites, and I would go on to assume that for strong brands such as Google, small details such as this can and will be taken very literally.

That said, the statement, “Tip: Want to share your life online with a blog? Try Blogger” is a very common way to plus sell products and many websites use this technique.  Amazon for example will use the same offhand recommendation style to pitch related products, so why shouldn’t Google?

But then, why can’t a blogger be paid to make a post about a product?  Google, it seems, doesn’t need to label their promotions as “sponsored results” anymore.

Should Google have to disclose their relationship with Blogger?  At face value, Blogger is a free service, so technically Google aren’t selling anything – but Blogger is a huge network that allows Google to plus sell Adsense and therefore expand their product offering to Adwords advertisers, so they do profit from it.

It doesn’t really bother me – I think anyone should be able to do whatever they please with their website, regardless if you are Google or Ma n’ Pa’s e-shop.  But I do think this approach by Google is somewhat borderline grey area territory.  Considering Google’s historically “do no evil” approach to marketing and the current climate for the need for disclosure with business relationships, this otherwise innocent addition to Google SERPs could raise a few eyebrows.

MG

We’re at the point now where I bet many SEOs start out designing a site and think “OK I’m going to put some Adsense here, here, here and here…”.

Oh and good, Yahoo is following suit with the tacky Adsense text ad format as are many other networks (and no doubt MSN will be running along late chasing the big kids as usual!).

Perhaps if Google set out and actually implemented some quality control (you know – like they constantly preach to webmasters about linking…) then people wouldn’t have this gut wrenching feeling everytime they open a page to find 60% of their screen is occupied with Adsense?  Maybe it’s just me because I’m a SEO and all I see these days is a piece of excrement floating in a sea of spam…maybe regular users think that the designer is an amateur and simply churned out a badly designed (and written) page?

What really annoys me is SEO agency sites with Adsense on them.  That just screams of newbieism (yeh I just made that word up).  Huh, so business is so great that the extra $100 a month from Adsense clicks makes the difference?  Shit, most SEOs wouldn’t take a phone call for that.

Don’t get me wrong.  I do make a nice little earner from the sites I run Adsense on – but I least make an effort to integrate it into the design of the site.  I considered throwing some on here, but what’s the point?  SEO adverts on a blog read by other SEOs?  Not really great targeting there, is it?  Perhaps my perception of Adsense would be a different if I didn’t see it on half the sites I end up visiting.

I think it’s time for the web to find a better method of monetising non product or service websites.

MG

The photo adverts take you to a link unti type advert page, which IMO is pretty shit anyway and could be designed a lot better for CTR.  Not a huge fan of link units as you can see.   Google could make a lot more cash from just sending the user to the top paying advertiser for the keyword rather than to a page of adverts (I mean come on – who wants to be taken to a page full of adverts!).

Some examples of the images on the Jensense link above – they seem to be generic stock photography – nothing particularly inspiring.  I’d imagine they would have a decent CTR impact on Google’s network of spam sites.