2. Google Analytics also announces the availability of a read-only API to their application. Several customer examples of applications built on this API are announced, including FutureNow’s OnTarget for Google Analytics. We can now leverage customer’s Google Analytics tags and bring in the data into OnTarget where our analysts can provide you your to-do list of conversion improvements.

3. According to the Silicon Alley Insider the U.S. now has almost as many paid bloggers as lawyers. As my friend David Cross asks “what do you call 10 bloggers at the bottom of a lake?”

4. Interesting analysis of why these twelve major brands that will disappear by the end of 2010.

5. In March 2009, Business.com completed an analytics study of more than 27,000 B2B web sites. It’s a great study and well worth downloading.

6. Fivesecondtest is a simple online usability test that helps you identify the most prominent elements of your user interfaces that we stumbled upon last week. It’s enlightening to do a few tests yourself to see how little about a website you can gather in just five seconds. I am not sure it compares favorably to other forms of usability testing.

Q: How many keywords would you suggest for starting a campaign?
A: We haven’t tested this specifically, but starting with thousands if you can avoid it is not a good idea. There are two dynamics – first you want to build up some good history with reasonable to good Quality Score, so from that perspective, going pretty slow and being highly focused and patient is best idea. On the other hand, what matters most is good relevance between all the components which will ultimately generate good QS. So if you have to build a large campaign, ideally you get some base built and then at some point you have to grow it, realize that there’s going to be a chasm to cross while you establish yourself – which may mean some high minimums and poor positions – and just fight through it. Google isn’t incentivized to put you in a downward spiral if your quality is good – recent success will trump history – so when you ‘get it right’ the QS and fate of the campaign will turn.

Q: Where do you find Impression Precentage?
A: I think you mean Impression Share, which is under the Reports Tab in Adwords as an optional field in the Campaign Report. (Or get it right in the campaign reports in ClickEquations!)

Q: What advice to you have for niche keywords that get low CTR?
A: Since keywords should only be triggered by relevant searches, the niche nature of a topic shouldn’t necessarily lower click-through-rates. The first thing to do is make sure you have picked good keywords and aren’t over-using Broad Match (see Match Type Keyword Trap for some ideas on this.) But ultimately all QS measures are relative, so if your CTRs are reasonable for your keywords, you shouldn’t be penalized.

Q: Is Dynamic Keyword Insertion (DKI) relevant anymore?
A: DKI is effective in some cases, but it hasn’t proven to be universally effective in our tests. And as mentioned it doesn’t give Quality Score a boost. Use it if it works (meaning test test test)

Q: Instead of deleting a keyword, should you put it in a different ad-group with a lower bid?
A: Certainly moving low CTR keywords into ’special’ AdGroups is a good idea (but like other points here don’t go overboard). The bid it should get then depends on how the CTR varies at different positions, whether you can craft a text-ad that increases its CTR, and your own profitability. I don’t think there is a QS-based answer to that.

Q: Is there a book you’d recommend to better understand Quality Score.
A: There’s one in progress on Craig’s hard drive, but you can’t get it yet.

Q: How does Google rate a company that uses different product specific URLs?
A: I assume the question is about using different domains within a single account. I’d assume the domain doesn’t matter, that the URL and page are measured on their own merits for each ad/keyword.

Q: Our Google Rep told us that moving keywords between Ad-Groups erases quality score. Were they lying?
A: Maybe they had not yet completed their full Google training. Kidding but honestly there is a lot of facts for anyone to know. But Google has publicly written (on the Adwords Blog or in help files I believe) that QS is retained by KW ID and especially KW-AD ID combos, even if moved within a single account. The same is true for target URL. Anytime one of these is used anywhere in an account its historical CTR is known.

Q: You mention geographical performance as a Quality Score Factor. Please elaborate.
A: Google looks at the performance of you KW/AD combo within the geography of the searcher to influence QS. So if your ads get good CTR in New York City, for example, you’ll get a higher Quality Score when people search from NYC, than those who search from LA. It’s your own personal red states / blue states for QS. Would be cool if they drew us a color coded map.

Q: I’m seeing visitors come several times in the same session (via my web analytics) does this negatively effect Quality Score?
A: I can’t see why it would.

Thank you Craig for taking the time for the webinar and for answering all these questions. Do you have more questions? Leave them in the comments. If your research contradicts what we have found, then please comment as well.

What: “Always Be Testing” Webinar: Google Quality Score – Exposing the Secret Factor to PPC Success

Quality Score is the PageRank of PPC. It’s a number Google assigns to your keywords which determines how much you have to bid, the position in which your ads appear, how often your ads are shown, and due to recent Adwords change it even determines if you can jump to the top of any search results page.

Understanding and managing Quality Score effects how you choose keywords, write text ads, and build landing pages. Knowing how your decisions impact Quality Score, and how Quality Score interacts with all the other controls you have in your accounts, can help you manage to greater PPC success

In this Webinar you’ll learn:
- exactly why the Quality Score in Adwords is so important,
- how Quality Score impacts the amount you spend and the amount you make from your PPC campaigns
- specific things you can do to drive the Quality Score higher for your keywords.

When: Tuesday, November 25, 2008 | 12:00pm EST

Where: Online, register here to receive your invitation

How much: It’s free, but space is limited so sign-up today!

About our Always Be Testing Webinars:

If you would like to view previous webinars please visit the Always Be Testing webinar archive.

For more details and to sign-up to attend, visit futurenowinc.com/abtwebinar.htm

We hope you’ll attend and share this with anyone you know who is looking to begin to test their marketing or to increase their testing effectiveness.

About the Series:
Whether your business has just started testing, is planning to test, or has been testing for years identifying the areas and elements that have impact is often challenging. Each month, Bryan Eisenberg starts off by taking attendees on a dive deep on a specific subject area to test in your marketing and give you ideas on variation you could test.

(*post updated 6/18/09)

1. Social Media Metrics Greasemonkey Plugin For Google Analytics – it pulls the social media metrics right into Google Analytics Content Detail reports automatically, with links to the social media sites for your pages. It pulls in data from Digg, Sphinn, Mixx, Reddit, StumbleUpon, and Del.icio.us, with more to come.

2. The Google Analytics Report Enhancer – Get enhanced segmentation, you will also be able to segment by transaction, adgroup, and referral path anytime a segmenting opportunity comes up. Now you can see exactly which transactions are attributed to each source, medium, source/medium, keyword, campaign, new or returning visitors, and more. You also get the ability to see the raw number of conversions for each goal you have as well as goal revenue.

3. Google Analytics hacks to obtaining full referring URLs – Provides two ways to get full referring urls into Google Analytics.

4. Multiple Profile Greasemonkey Script – If you have multiple profiles setup for your google analytics account, you will be able to select a new profile to view you will see the same report you were just on, but it will be for the new profile which you selected. Also, if you wish to compare reports from two profiles, there is an option to view the new profile in a separate tab.

5. Unusual Keyword Trends in Google Analytics With Greasemonkey – provides a “What’s Changed” report which tells a) which referrers have sent most traffic in last few days and b) which have sent most traffic where they never did before.

6. Google Website Optimizer multivariate experiment data to show up in Google Analytics – While Google Website Optimizer by itself can give you a quick look at which combination is best at improving conversion, it tells you nothing about transactions, revenue, micro-conversions, navigation, segmentation by source, and bounce rate. If you integrate Google Analytics into your Google Website Optimizer experiments, you will get much richer data, and be able to get a true idea of how your test is doing.

7. Google Analytics for Wordpress – This plugin easily adds your Google Analytics tracking code (the new ga.js one!) to all pages within your blog. This plugin adds the possibility to tag and segment all outgoing links, so you can see whether a click came from a comment or an article. This WordPress plugin also gives you the possibility to track downloads with Google Analytics based on a set of extensions you specify and adds the possibility to track all image searches as organic and collect their keywords.

8. SiteScan – A Google Analytics Diagnostic tool designed to provide you with a complete audit of your Google Analytics setup. SiteScan is a free way to ensure that your Google Analytics is configured properly on your website. The most comprehensive web analytics debugger is the WASP Firefox extension.

9. Goal Copy Extension – The Goal Copy extension records all of the values in a Google Analytics Goal Settings form. You can then navigate to another profile where you want to put that copied goal and paste all of those values into the new form. That way, you can get your goals from one profile to another without all the tedium.

10. The Unofficial Google Analytics API – Uses Google’s email as XML function to send your data to Google Groups so you can use the data. There is also the Google Analytics Python API.

11. Google Analytics to Google Docs Greasemonkey Script – do a one-click export to create a Google spreadsheet for analyzing Google Analytics data.

12. Get Detailed PPC Keyword Data from Google Analytics – This filter shows exactly the Search Term (i.e. keywords that are searched on) rather than just the Bid Term (i.e. the keywords that triggered a PPC advert). For example, if a visitor searches for “sony digital camera” and you have an ad configured for the keywords “digital camera” as a Broad Match in Google AdWords. With this filter the same search will show “digital camera, (sony+digital+camera)” in any Google Analytics report that shows keywords (e.g. Marketing Optimization -> Search Engine Marketing -> Overall Keyword Conversion) or any time you cross-segment against keywords.

13. Analytics KPI gadget for iGoogle – This widget allows you to see important KPI information from Google Analytics directly in iGoogle.

14. Google Analytics Reporting Suite – Using Adobe Air the Google Analytics Reporting Suite brings Google Analytics to the desktop.

15. Customize the list of recognized search engines – Adds 60+ additional search engines for detection (rather than listed as a referrer) and differentiates regional variations e.g. google.co.uk, google.com, msn.se etc.

16. Script to capture first and last referrer in Google Analytics – From my friend, Brian Clifton’s book Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics.

17. Excluding Internal Traffic the Easy Way – Make sure your data isn’t polluted with your own or your company’s clicks.

18. Tracking Your Twitter Tweets with Google Analytics – This method will track anyone visiting the site as a result of your tweet, regardless of where they clicked on the URL. It doesn’t matter if it’s in an email client, hosted email app. etc.

19. The Official Google Analytics blog – Get the latest from the Google Analytics team. They also publish the excellent Conversion University.

20. Google Analytics Help Center – The official forum to get your questions answered about Google Analytics.

21. Google Analytics for iPhone – Access your Google analytics on your iPhone.

22. Google Analytics Notes – Keep track of events by adding notes directly into Google Analytics.

23. Better Google Analytics Firefox extension – This wraps up several scripts into one. This super-script will allow you to:

• Auto press the “Access Analytics” button, if it is displayed
• Remembers settings you set when you switch between profiles, and allows you to open another profile in a new tab quickly.
• Allows you to export any report available as CSV to Google Spreadsheets.
• Converts percent values to absolute values in tables.
• Provides one-click access to year-over-year reports in Google Analytics.
• Sorts the visible table rows.
• and Adds Digg, Sphinn, Mixx, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Del.icio.us, and Yahoo InLink Metrics to your content detail reports.

24. The Enhanced Google Analytics Firefox Plugin – is designed to allow analysts to get more action out of what changed in the Referring Sites and Keyword Reports.

25. Kampyle/Google Analytics Mashup – this plugin allows you to incorporate the feedback you get from using Kampyle on your website (you need account for both) and integrate it with your Google Analytics.

26. Excellent Analytics is a simple Excel plug in that lets you import web analytics data from Google Analytics in to an Excel spreadsheet.

Please help me maintain this list as the one place to find all the Google Analytics plugins, hacks and tricks. Do you know of any others that should be on the list?

What: “Always Be Testing” Webinar: Landing Page Optimization: Layout and Design Elements

When: Monday, September 29, 2008 | 2:00pm EST

Where: Online, register here to receive your invitation

How much: It’s free, but space is limited so sign-up today!

About this session:

July kicked off the series with a webinar on testing trust and confidence building elements on landing pages (view archive ). Our August session covered improving landing pages focusing on testing calls to action and headlines. This month session will cover layout and design elements. Register today! Space is limited.

“Always Be Testing” Webinar Series is a monthly webinar that covers specific testing ideas, how to structure tests, and how to use Google Website Optimizer. The best part is that Google has decided to participate in it first-hand, offering the lastest tips and insights straight from Tom Leung, Google’s Business Product Manager.

“Landing Page Optimization: Layout and Design Elements” will be on September 29th, at 2:00pm EST and last about 30 minutes.

For more details and to sign-up to attend, visit futurenowinc.com/abtwebinar.htm

We hope you’ll attend and share this with anyone you know who is looking to begin to test their marketing or to increase their testing effectiveness.

About the Series:
Whether your business has just started testing, is planning to test, or has been testing for years identifying the areas and elements that have impact is often challenging. Each month, Bryan Eisenberg starts off by taking attendees on a dive deep on a specific subject area to test in your marketing and give you ideas on variation you could test. Along with these ideas each month Tom Leung will bring you useful insider tips and tricks about using Google Website Optimizer to easily test your marketing campaigns and website. Lastly, the two will team up to answer a popular question spotted on the Google Website Optimizer forums or sent in by our readers and listeners.

Register for the event today (limited space available).

Google Insights for Search analyzes a portion of worldwide Google web searches from all Google domains to compute how many searches have been done for the terms you’ve entered, relative to the total number of searches done on Google over time. We then show you a graph with the results, indicating interest over time, plotted on a scale from 0 to 100; the totals are indicated next to bars by the search terms.

Read more about how we scale and normalize the data.On the results page, you’ll also see a list of the top searches, top rising searches, and a world heat map graphically displaying the search volume index with regions, subregions, and cities.

Keep in mind that Insights uses data aggregated over millions of users without personally identifiable information, and is powered by computer algorithms. Additionally, Insights only shows results for search terms that receive a significant amount of traffic, and enforces minimum thresholds for inclusion in the tool. For more information about how Google protects privacy, please refer to our privacy policy.

Go try out Google’s Insights for Search for your keywords. Let me know what you think in the comments below.

What: “Always Be Testing” Webinar: Landing Pages: Headlines and Calls to Action

When: Wednesday, August 27, 2008 | 12:00pm EST

Where: Online, register here to receive your invitation

How much: It’s free, but space is limited so sign-up today!

About this session:

Last month kicked off the series with a webinar on testing trust and confidence building elements on landing pages (view archive ). Our August session will continue to explore landing pages focusing on testing calls to action and headlines. register today! Space is limited.

“Always Be Testing” Webinar Series is a monthly webinar that covers specific testing ideas, how to structure tests, and how to use Google Website Optimizer. The best part is that Google has decided to participate in it first-hand, offering the lastest tips and insights straight from Tom Leung, Google’s Business Product Manager.

“Landing Pages: Headlines and Calls to Action Webinar” will be on August 27th, at 12:00pm EST and last 30 minutes.

For more details and to sign-up to attend, visit futurenowinc.com/abtwebinar.htm

We hope you’ll attend and share this with anyone you know who is looking to begin to test their marketing or to increase their testing effectiveness.

About the Series:
Whether your business has just started testing, is planning to test, or has been testing for years identifying the areas and elements that have impact is often challenging. Each month, Bryan Eisenberg starts off by taking attendees on a dive deep on a specific subject area to test in your marketing and give you ideas on variation you could test. Along with these ideas each month Tom Leung will bring you useful insider tips and tricks about using Google Website Optimizer to easily test your marketing campaigns and website. Lastly, the two will team up to answer a popular question spotted on the Google Website Optimizer forums or sent in by our readers and listeners.

I was responsible for the performance of those sites, and I was the de facto “web analytics guy” within my company.  But I wasn’t a full-time Web Analyst, and I had lots of other strategic and operational things to do.

Sound familiar?

When I did look at my web analytics, I often skimmed the information contained in my default “dashboard,” and rarely dove into the real data unless someone came to me with a specific question, or I had to produce a report.

There’s an obvious downside to that approach: The data in the dashboard is very “averaged out” and may lead us to miss more specific data points that we can leverage to do a better job.  But how do we get at the juicy money making data, while not spending too much time getting buried in minutia?

The solution? Scheduling in regular, recurring “data dives” to make sure you are not getting addicted to the dashboard view of your website.  Maybe start with once a week, and put it in your calendar. (If you don’t you’ll likely never find the time ☺)

Note: I am using Google Analytics in these examples because of its ubiquity, but they should all be applicable to any modern web analytics system:

Here are 5 tips to get you started:

1. Instead of the default “last 30 days” view of your analytics, try exploring different extended date ranges.  For example, I used to keep a rolling, 90-day dashboard.  Using the “timeline” function in the date selector tool is good for this.  So is selecting “date range” in the comparison dropdown menu; that way you can compare the same date range in the prior year, for example.
2. Make sure you assign goals and dollar amounts to every conversion on your site.  Most sites have a primary conversion like becoming a lead, subscribing, or purchasing, but micro-conversions are important, too.  Tag your primary conversion goal with your average order value, your lead conversions with a value per lead, etc.  For micro-conversions, figure out what percentage of your visitors that take that action eventually leads to sales.  If 1% of blog subscribers turn into deals, and the average deal is worth $500, then that micro-conversion goal value should be $5.
3. Explore the Traffic Sources reports to get a better understanding of your traffic “mix.”  Segmenting by traffic source can often yield quick, actionable insights.  Try looking at your organic traffic over the last 6 months, or your referral traffic over the last 3 months.  What does the traffic graph look like?  How well or poorly are they converting?  Has that KPI remained consistent?
4. Dive into your Top Content reports, and try sorting by “$Index.”  Note: This value is only calculated if you’ve assigned goal values and e-commerce revenue values across your site.  And believe it or not, there are ways to assign e-commerce values to your site pages even if you’re not running an e-commerce site.  $Index calculates the values of pages according to how often they’re accessed en route to a conversion.  It works kind of like the plus/minus point system used in the NHL.  If a player is on the ice when a goal is scored, they’re “+1,” and if they’re on the ice when a goal is scored against, they’re “-1.”  So if a page is very regularly visited by customers who convert, it will have a high $Index value.  It’s a great way to figure out which high-impact pages you should start testing and optimizing.
5. If you have site search, spend some time hooking your web analytics up to your in-site search, then dive headfirst into the very valuable data the Site Search reports can provide.  Are you able to see which keywords are delivering “zero results”?  What keywords are being used most often in search?  Are visitors who search more likely to convert?  Do they spend more per transaction?  Are there products are services your visitors ask for that you don’t offer?  Should you?

I know there are more handy tips around, but I limited this to 5 because I’m sure our readership has some brilliant ways they can share on how to do healthy and productive “data dives.”

And if this was useful, let us know, and maybe we’ll do a part two.

One final note:  Data diving is healthy and fun, but just remember to come up for air once in a while . Even more important, don’t let the stuff you learn from your analytics just sit there, turn your learnings into action and let’s move our conversion needles together.

We all take the Google homepage for granted.

It’s so remarkably simple that (unless you’re, say, a blogger for a website optimization firm) it’s unremarkable; just a text box, two call to action buttons, and a few links that most humans don’t even look at, let alone use. That’s all.

But why? Why is it that the Google homepage has barely changed in the past decade? Are they obsessed with minimalism, or is there more to the story?

From its humble origins as a research project by a couple of Stanford graduate students, Sergei Brin and Larry Page always knew that testing matters. They realized that it’s not just important to build a good online experience, but that they would need to know why it worked in order to make it better.

Take a look at Google’s 1998 homepage and see if you can guess its most innovative feature:

Got your answer? Feeling lucky (hint: that’s not it)? Great. Now hold that thought.

Speaking at the Google I/O conference last week, Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products and user experience at Google, explained how the company developed a culture of testing, insisting that, “On the Web in general, [creating sites] is much more a design than an art. You can find small differences and mathematically learn which is right.”

The CNet article (also linked to above) details some of Google’s many innovations from their years of A/B split testing. Their results illustrate one of our mantras here at FutureNow: “Believe what they do, not what they say they will do.” For instance, users claimed they wanted to see more search results per page, but testing proved otherwise. You can read the article for details on that one, but I digress. The homepage example remains the most telling. Here’s how Mayer tells it:

[Our beta testers] would sit in front of the Google screen for 15 seconds, 30 seconds, 45 seconds, a minute…Google was perplexed.

So Mayer would eventually intervene and ask what was holding up the searchers. “I’m waiting for the rest of it,” they’d say. Clearly they expected more of the flashy ads and busy text of other search pages of the 1990s.

“The very first home page was that misunderstood. People didn’t resonate with it,” Mayer said. One woman even thought the Web site was a fake construction that was part of a psychology experiment. As a result, the company put a copyright notice at the bottom of the page. “It’s not there for legal reasons,” Mayer said. “It’s there as punctuation. That’s it. (It tells the searcher) ‘Nothing else is coming; please start searching now.’”

So here it is, the big innovation they came up with back in 1998:

Amazing. Just showing a copyright assurance is what gives us the confidence to proceed.

Mayer said a lot of insightful things in her presentation, but this quote struck me:

“The urgent can drown out the important.”

So true. With website optimization, what seems to be of urgent and of vital importance from your company’s perspective may not at all be what’s urgent and vital to your visitors. In fact, your visitors may not even know what they’d fix about your website if they could.

Who among us would have told Google back in 1998 that they should try putting a copyright symbol on the homepage? [*Hears crickets chirping in background.*] Exactly. And that’s why developing hypotheses and testing from the visitor’s perspective is a must.

. .

Editor’s Note: FutureNow is an “authorized consultant” for Google Website Optimizer. (We’re writing the book on it.) To learn about which of our optimization services will best help you boost conversion rates and other key performance metrics, please contact us for a free consultation.

Formerly available only to AdWords users, Google Website Optimizer can now be accessed by anyone with a basic Google account. Even if you only have so much as a Gmail account, you can start testing your website — for free — regardless of whether you’re running a paid search campaign. (No worries, AdWords users, Website Optimizer still works seamlessly with the rest of the Google product suite.)

Companies of all sizes are getting results with Website Optimizer. And since it runs independently of your analytics program — or in sync with it, if you have Google Analytics — there’s little room for argument between departments as to whether or not your company should be testing. You should.

To find out more about Google Website Optimizer, visit their new…

• Website – Unglued from the AdWords site, you can visit Google.com/websiteoptimizer directly.
• Blog – Subscribe to websiteoptimizer.blogspot.com for product updates, case studies and ideas worth testing.

Why is FutureNow so excited about Google Website Optimizer? A few reasons:

1. Authorized Consultant – FutureNow was one of the original firms to be invited to test GWO with clients, and the case studies have been remarkable so far. Is yours next?
2. Writing the book on GWO – Bryan Eisenberg & John Quarto-vonTivadar, inventors of FutureNow’s patented Persuasion Architecture® methodology, have teamed up to write Always Be Testing: The Complete Guide to Google Website Optimizer, in book stores this August.
3. It works! – The results speak for themselves.

Of course, knowing what to test — design elements, copy, etc. — is everything. If you’d like to start testing and you’re not sure if you need to hire a firm, here are several free resources to get started with Google Website Optimizer.

Got questions about Website Optimizer or testing in general? We’d love to hear your comments.

Many of you are aware of Google Trends, the handy tool that enables you to track and compare what Google users are searching for. Now imagine a similar tool that can give you some insight into what people are buying and selling online. That’s exactly what we’ve built: Google Checkout Trends aggregates the sales data of Google Checkout merchants and charts it in a matter of seconds. (Of course, all the data is anonymized first.) So if you’re interested in how sales of Batman or Spider Man paraphernalia compare, or are wondering just how popular Ugg boots are these days, visit Checkout Trends for a glimpse into online shopping. Go ahead and try it out — and get creative with the searches. You may be surprised at what you find.

I was having problems this morning getting any results from my searches, even from their six suggested searches. Every time I searched, I received a message that said:

Your terms – ipod, zune do not have enough search volume to show graphs.

If you want to see what the graph of results looks like you can find people discussing it here, here, and here.

Regardless, I think once these issues are resolved, like Google Trends this will provide some interesting data. One thing to keep in mind though is that in our analysis for our 2007 Customer Experience Retail study we found only 10% of the 300+ top retailers offered Google Checkout as an option.

How meaningful will the results really be?

Have you had better luck with Google Checkout Trends? Your impressions?

Barack Obama added another “first” to his already notable list yesterday: he became the first U.S. presidential candidate — and, I’m guessing, the first high-level elected official in any country — to have a ready answer to a standard Google engineering interview question. Asked by Eric Schmidt about “the most efficient way to sort a million 32-bit integers,” Sen. Obama replied that “the bubble sort would be the wrong way to go.” Though some might view this as shameless pandering to the bucket-sorting community, others will see a bold pragmatism.

Obama then reaffirmed his stance on Net Neutrality, and offered the following vision for transparency between the United States government and its electorate:

I’ll put government data online in universally accessible formats. I’ll let citizens track federal grants, contracts, earmarks, and lobbyist contacts. I’ll let you participate in government forums, ask questions in real time, offer suggestions that will be reviewed before decisions are made, and let you comment on legislation before it is signed. And to ensure that every government agency is meeting 21st century standards, I’ll appoint the nation’s first Chief Technology Officer.

Is this just another campaign promise? We’d love to hear your thoughts. You can see video of Schmidt’s “fireside chat”-style job interview with Obama in its entirety at Google Public Policy Blog.

No word yet on whether Senator Obama consumed his weight in free sushi at the company’s all-you-can-eat gourmet cafeteria. But rest assured that the issue has a good chance of coming up during tonight’s televised debate among Democratic Party candidates (yes, there’s another one).

Atwood shows that YouTube’s copyright tips page, although refreshingly plain-spoken, is a bit self-righteous, considering that, as he puts it, 90% of the content on YouTube is ripped-off copyrighted material…

It’s completely glossed over on the YouTube copyright page in favor of 100% original content, but the loophole in copyright is fair use. Under the banner of fair use, you could legally upload a video without the copyright holder’s permission. Anyone who contributes anything to the web should have the four factors of fair use commited [sic] to memory by now:

1. the purpose of the use
2. the nature of the copyrighted work
3. the relative amount of the portion used
4. the market effect of the use on the copyrighted work

Atwood goes on to explain why “The typical YouTube clip does well on the last two factors of the fair use test, but utterly fails the first two.” It’s an eye-opener for anyone who creates original content.

Meanwhile, our attitudes toward the media landscape continues to shift according to generational fault lines. In AdvertisingAge, Mike Vorhaus shares some telling figures:

Americans also believe their use of online video has cannibalized TV. Overall, more than 15% of respondents say they watch TV less as a result of watching online videos. And 25% of 18- to 24-year-olds believe that online video is cannibalizing their TV viewing. In comparison, fewer than 11% of 45- to 54-year-olds report such cannibalization.

Hmm… Does it count as watching TV if you’re watching TV on YouTube?

The gadget ads

Spelling it out for us on the Google Operating System blog, Alex Chitu insists that…

Because most of the normal gadgets can be embedded into a web page and many people already use iGoogle, the gadget ad will be a familiar presence. “Google Gadget Ads are nearly identical to Google Gadgets, except that they run as rich media ads on the Google content network. By adding a small bit of code called a click URL to your Google Gadget, the gadget becomes a Google Gadget Ad, capable of running as an ad on thousands of content network sites. Otherwise, the two can be identical in their basic construction and content.” This way, Google also solved the problem of monetizing iGoogle in a clever way: users will voluntary add gadget ads to the homepage and interact with them. The ads won’t be perceived as annoying because you chose to include them in your homepage.

Marketing Pilgrim shows a great example of an Intel ad, with this bit of commentary from Andy Beal:

Is it any surprise that Google is keen to monetize widgets? There’s more than enough widgets being pumped out onto the web, with comScore reporting their popularity growth. And there are also plenty of evidence that advertising in widgets works–companies like LinkShare, PopShops, and ShareASale are already in the space.

So, if you’re already sick of seeing gadgets/widgets all over the web, prepare yourself. Now that advertisers have a solid advertising platform to monetize them, you can expect to see a whole lot more.

The big hire

AdvertisingAge reports that Andy Berndt has joined Google.

[...] Berndt, co-president of Ogilvy & Mather’s New York office, has left his post at the agency to go to Google, where hewill helm a new global unit dedicated to collaborating with marketers, agencies and entertainment companies.

[...] There has been much speculation over the past year whether Google would try to get into the agency business. The new global unit isn’t being called an agency, but any unit offering creative consultation and account services could be considered one. Interestingly, Google had been trying to lure more creative talent to the company over the past year, according to ad industry executives familiar with the search giant.

Microsoft, meanwhile, recently bought its way into the agency business with its $6 billion purchase of aQuantive, parent company to agency Avenue A/Razorfish. When asked whether it would shed the agency after the purchase, Microsoft was adamant that it liked the business.

Commenting on the story, John Battelle insists “Google is setting itself up as a full service advertising company. And that means client services and creative innovation.”

The 411

Not to be outdone by itself for the second day in a row, Google has also begun promoting itself offline. With billboards. Search Engine Land has the scoop, with pictures of the distinctly non-interactive ads for the free 800-GOOG-411 service.

iPhones… for Steve Jobs… and Germany…

BusinessWeek tells us that Germans can now overpay for an iPhone. They’re 399 Euro (that’s $557 for you American refund snobs). They’re available via T-Mobile. If you’re in Berlin, that’s all you really need to know.

[Tired of reading other blogs? Catch Blog Buzz weekdays on WebmasterRadio.fm — or subscribe via iTunes. Bryan Eisenberg & Robert Gorell host the podcast, featuring a rundown of the day's top stories from The Grok's Buzz Bin.]

“A great battle in the sea of Ones and Zeros
will present itself unto the Weblings;
the keepers of gates replaced by wanderers of Gooland
and evil itself shall require the correct URL.” –Grokstradamus, Quatrain 2.0

Today, the Internet’s true owners Google announced the release of a presentation feature for Google Docs, its answer to the Microsoft Office suite. In other words, Google now has PowerPoint — only it’s hosted online and, theoretically, more secure.

What might come of Google’s online presentation software? Here are a few predictions:

• Last April, Google bought Marritech, a cross-platform video conferencing company (see also WebEx, GoToMeeting). There’s likely a bigger offering on the way.
• Imagine hosting a live meeting, directly from the document, allowing others on your team to edit the presentation in real time. (Yes, that could be a good thing.)
• Picture, if you will, hosting a free webinar; free to your audience because it’s paid for by Google ads on the side of your screen.
• If it’s a paid event, your Google Docs seminar could give your audience the option to pay via Google Checkout with a single click. No hassle.

Still, not everybody’s excited about this initial release. ZDNet’s Garret Rogers thinks Google shouldn’t have bothered launching it.

Where do I start? Well, first off, there is no support for exporting a document to Powerpoint or as .odp (the open document format for presentations). I guess this isn’t truly a complimentary service to other office suites anymore like they have repeated over and over. Uploading Powerpoint presentations is basically useless too — it butchered the one I tested with.

Most companies have their own Powerpoint template they use to make sure presentations all have the same look and feel. And with that said — don’t bother trying to use it. There is no way to create your own template or upload one that already exists. If you have images that make up your template, you can add them to each slide but they have to be less than 2MB otherwise you will be out of luck. Oh, by the way, your presentation can’t exceed 10MB either.

[...] Oh, and bulleted points are sometimes nice to do one at a time — but you can’t do that either. You have to create a copy of the previous slide and add an extra point to emulate click events — who has time to do that?

Some powerful points, indeed. And that’s not all that’s happening on the office software front. Last night, Yahoo! acquired Zimbra for $350 million in cash. TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington insists:

This was a very, very smart acquisition. In one quick move Yahoo is now in the race with Google for the next generation online/offline office suite. I would not be surprised to see them pick up Zoho next. That is, if they really want to dominate own this space and be a credible threat to Google Docs.

Oh, but there’s more… The New York Times reports that I.B.M. has teamed up with OpenOffice to offer an enhanced version of the the open-source office suite. Between Yahoo, Google, and — yikes — I.B.M., Microsoft must be a bit rattled today.

Google overload…

Meanwhile, Google’s going full-speed ahead. Last night, they even launched AdSense for mobile. According to Google’s Inside AdSense blog, “If you have a website optimized for mobile browsers, or are interested in creating one, you can start monetizing your mobile site by accessing a growing number of our mobile advertisers.”

Is that all? Only two new product launches from Google in a single day? How ’bout three?

Read/WriteWeb’s Marshall Kilpatrick reports that Google Reader has left the lab — it’s no longer in beta — and has added 9 new languages: “French, Italian, German, Spanish, English (UK), Chinese (Traditional and Simplified), Japanese, and Korean.”

New York Times sets content free

Making a bit of its own news, NYTimes.com will do away with TimesSelect, the premium subscription service that granted access to its editorial columns and featured content. According to the Times:

…the project had met expectations, drawing 227,000 paying subscribers — out of 787,000 over all — and generating about $10 million a year in revenue.

“But our projections for growth on that paid subscriber base were low, compared to the growth of online advertising,” said Vivian L. Schiller, senior vice president and general manager of the site…

“Hammer Time” 2.0?

Who could possibly forget everyone’s favorite 5-hit-wonder dance-rap phenomenon, MC Hammer? Well, after going bankrupt and becoming a preacher immediately after his career tanked in the 90’s, it seems someone was listening. Hammer’s reinvented himself once again… as a tech entrepreneur?

Don Dodge tells us of his pal Hammer’s epic journey from parachute-pants-to-rags-to-angel-money with his new venture, DanceJam:

DanceJam hasn’t launched yet, but Hammer gave me a demo of the site. DanceJam can best be described as YouTube mashed up with American Idol. Users can contribute their own dance videos to the site for others to see and vote on. The DanceJam people set up “Dance Offs” where they put two dance videos up against each other and have the user community vote for a winner. After several rounds of voting they declare a champion.

[Sick of reading? Catch Blog Buzz weekdays on WebmasterRadio.fm — or subscribe via iTunes. Bryan Eisenberg & Robert Gorell host the podcast, featuring a rundown of the day's top stories from The Grok's Interactive Marketing Buzz.]

Tom speaks with GrokDotCom managing editor Robert Gorell about:

• Success stories from companies of all sizes who’ve realized they can now improve their websites by testing (and for free!)
• Creative ways to use Google Website Optimizer to boost Conversion Rates and improve the visitor experience
• New features such as A/B testing, which allows you to set up a test in minutes
• What you can do to get results like Future Now client JigsawHealth.com, who nearly doubled their Conversion Rate(!) With some changes to the homepage, they went from selling to a tenth of their visitors to converting a fifth of all visitors.
• Why everyone should be testing; it’s free, it’s simple and, best of all, you can do it!

Click here to listen to Tom Leung and Robert Gorell

(To download the interview, right-click here and “save as”.)

If you’re discovering Google Website Optimizer for the first time, or would like some advice on what to test, check out our 7 Free Resources to Get Started.

[*In case you missed Tom's first Grokcast appearance -- and would like a general introduction to GWO -- don't forget to listen to the podcast or read the transcript of Bryan Eisenberg's interview.]

Google calls the ads not just “engaging” but “viewer-friendly” — which, in PR-speak, roughly translates to, “Well, they’re not as annoying as they could be.”

Of course, in-video banners aren’t a new concept; VideoEgg has been doing it for awhile now. Yes, this approach is less annoying than “preroll” or “midroll” ads that interrupt the experience — and “postroll” ads are just silly, unless the idea is to push people away from the site altogether. Besides, YouTube had to do something, right? How long could they go before denying affiliates — and themselves — ad revenue beyond traditional banner ads?

But can anything that interrupts a 2-minute video really be considered “viewer-friendly”? Rough Type’s Nick Carr sums it up perfectly:

[...] That’s like saying that being hit on the head once with a hammer is a pleasant experience because it’s not as bad as being hit on the head twice with a hammer.I liked the reaction of the first viewer to leave a comment on the YouTube blog: “yuck.” If you’re going to stick ads on the videos, go ahead and stick ads on the videos. But, please, don’t tell us you’re doing it on our behalf. We’re not idiots.

Over at Publishing 2.0, meanwhile, Scott Karp hammers on the need for relevance with in-video ads.

Not being interruptive is the very LEAST that online advertising needs to do in order to thrive — what it really needs to do is be RELEVANT.

The beauty of search advertising is that the format and the relevancy of the ad are PERFECTLY aligned with that of the “editorial” content, through the miracle of search keywords.

That will surely be the case in some instances of InVideo ads, but in many if not most instances, the ads will have nothing to do with the editorial content — and the relevancy to any individual viewer, unlike keyword targeted search ads, will be hit or miss.

And there’s a BIG problem with low relevancy — advertisers only pay if someone views the ads.

Still, in the Times article, VideoEgg’s chief marketing officer, Troy Young, claims that “Viewers click on them at a rate roughly five times higher than banner ads.”

Then what?

Once again, the conversation about online ad placement centers around a lesser-of-evils argument. That’s no surprise. The old media concept of relevance remains tied to demographics rather than customer motivations; a far better anchor. Create a clickable, holographic video widget that transmits banner ads across continents and click-through rates remain meaningless if the ads inspire fatigue instead of action.

UPDATE: Brightcove CEO Jeremy Allaire says YouTube overlay ads don’t work.

What’s Google doing that makes more people convert in their checkout than sites with only in-house checkout? Here’s a list of five features that are aiding its success and can be integrated into all checkouts.

1. They stripped unnecessary steps from the checkout process, making it very easy for the customer: there are no additional steps to sign up; the customer simply enters his information and they have an account; there’s only one field for an address displayed in their form; following the form is a button to open another section of the form to enter a different shipping address only if necessary.  There are also no optional fields in their forms; no fax numbers, no entering in your email address twice.  They don’t worry about where you heard about the site. Just the bare minimum of what is needed to allow the customer to pay for the product and get it shipped.

2. Its only two pages and very fast! Customers barely have to time to second-guess their purchase.

3. Google gives assurances near each Call to Action, telling the customer what to expect in their checkout, and delivers. On the first page of checkout it says, “You can still make changes to your order on the next page.” They do something similar on the first page in the product review. By telling the customer that their shipping and tax will be calculated on the next page.

4. A brief synopsis of the company’s return policy on the second page with a link to read the entire policy.

5. Google shows customers which products they’re ordering before they’re required to enter any credit card information.

There are many more reasons to the success of Google Checkout. There is also room for improvement.  For instance:

• What is Google going to do with my credit card information? There is not a clear explanation of this and digging through a legal contract is never fun.
• Some sites have not properly implemented Google Checkout and leave out options that customers may value. CDUniverse.com doesn’t allow the selection of any gift options before entering Google Checkout or during, but they have it on their own checkout.
• They could display the return policies in a more noticeable area than the very bottom of the last page.
• Some questions are unanswered regarding how Google Checkout works, such as, Do you need a Gmail account?
• There isn’t clear information about when the customer will receive the item at their house.

Do you have any experience with Google Checkout? Have you noticed any impact on your conversion rate in checkout with Google Checkout as opposed to your sites checkout? Any other observations or concerns? Google Checkout looks like it’s set to take the lead as the main third party provider for customers and merchants beating out Yahoo and PayPal’s combined effort (which Marketing Pilgrim likes to call “Payhoo”).

But that depends on what your definition of the word “free” is. If city governments pay, taxpayers flip the bill. If Google picks up the tab, “free” means ad-supported. Any way you slice it, innovation isn’t free, and Wi-Fi doesn’t mean what it used to. That seems to be why Google recently announced its Wi-Max ambitions and plan for creating a free wireless mobile network.

We’ve seen this before. Back in 2005, Google claimed it would give free Wi-Fi to San Francisco residents, which it hasn’t — yet. Meanwhile, several U.S. city governments, moving at a snail’s pace, have been talking about “municipal Wi-Fi” for years. Very few have made it happen, and the ones that have are regretting it to various degrees.

As it turns out, what’s good for Spokane, WA, may not be work for Philadelphia, PA.

BusinessWeek’s Olga Kharif reports on “Why Wi-Fi Networks are Floundering“:

While 415 U.S. cities and counties are now building or planning to build municipal Wi-Fi networks, “deployments are slowing down slightly,” says Esme Vos, founder of consultancy MuniWireless.com. Vos’s tally still marks a nearly 70% jump from mid-2006, when there were 247 muni Wi-Fi projects on tap, but that’s down from the torrid pace of a year earlier, when deployment plans doubled.

Perhaps the clearest hint of trouble ahead is that some of the companies partnering with cities on these projects, including EarthLink (ELNK) and AT&T (T), are having second thoughts about remaining in the municipal Wi-Fi business.

In San Francisco, recent developments have left many observers scratching their heads over whether that city’s Wi-Fi project, announced more than a year ago, will ever get off the ground. In July, the president of the city’s Board of Supervisors revealed that he was seeking to change the terms of the preliminary contracts awarded to EarthLink and Google (GOOG)

Could it be? Is Google the “deadbeat dad” of free wireless internet service?

I wouldn’t count on it. Creating a Wi-Fi grid for a city as hilly and tech-obsessed as San Francisco is way more complicated than partnering with Sprint to retrofit its existing cell phone towers with longer-range Wi-Max equipment. (In the past, they’ve explored other alternatives )

Google is playing it smart by stalling on free Wi-Fi. Perhaps they spoke too soon, but they’re planning their business model from every angle before giving it away for free in the form of Wi-Max.

Maybe the cities should have done the same. Being an early adopter is great, so long as you’re not stuck with outdated technology to support the huddled masses and their $1,000+ laptops.

UPDATE — GigaOm reports that a company called Meraki will give San Francisco free Wi-Fi. It would seem they’ve beat Google to the punch if not for the fact that Google & Sequoia Capital funded Meraki earlier this year.

It’s a tragic tale of copyright hygiene turned hijinks.

You can read the full story at E! Online if you want, but NewTeeVee’s Jackson West gives us a fine example of truthiness (define) in action with this spoof on what might happen when Colbert and Stewart testify in court:

New York Southern District court, the Honorable Louis Stanton presiding. Defense counsel Philip Beck calls Stephen Colbert to the witness stand.

Philip Beck: Mr. Colbert, did you not encourage viewers to re-use material from your show?

Stephen Colbert: Yes, but I didn’t ask them to put their work on YouTube for just anyone to watch for free. I asked them to send their submissions to me. As the legal property of Viacom International, my plan was to publish a special commemorative Colbert Report: Green Screen Challenge DVD, available for only $9.95 exclusively at Wal-Mart, where you can find everyday low prices. My friend Bill Gates was working on an especially restrictive new Digital Rights Management technology just for the occasion — it would check to make sure you weren’t on Homeland Security’s “No Fly” list, preventing terrorists from funding their attacks on freedom with profits from illegal piracy.

Beck: But wouldn’t that amount to free work on the part of your viewers for your benefit?

Colbert: Look, profits make me happy, and I have a constitutional right to the pursuit of happiness. And how better to make profits than to have people working for you for free? I’m a traditionalist, and as a country we have a long tradition of making people work for free — and I, good sir, am proud to support other people who are willing to give their lives to protect those values.

Beck: So you do believe that fans posting clips from shows serves a promotional purpose?

Stewart: Whoa, doctor! When pundits with books to sell and candidates with a demographic to reach out to agree to appear on the show, it’s with the understanding that I’m beholden to the same media overlords that they are. As a fake news professional, I treat that obligation with respect. You can’t trust the fake news amateurs on the Internet to provide the kind of nuanced context that, say, a double-entendre in an over-the-shoulder title graphic provides.

Keep reading… if you can handle the truthiness.

UPDATE — Here’s how the Daily Show parodied the Viacom/YouTube suit. The video has been slightly doctored by a fan, making it a supposedly legal parody of a parody. (Is there an intellectual property attorney in the house?)

Data from the University of Michigan American Consumer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) showed Yahoo had seen its customer satisfaction score rise 3.9 percent from a year ago to 79 out of 100 points, while Google’s rating fell about 3.7 percent to 78 points.

While Google remains the dominant Web search engine, Yahoo’s Internet presence is gaining user approval for its network of Web sites, e-mail, social networks and other features, according to the survey.

The positive perception of Yahoo stems from a relaunch of the main site and its various offshoots which are now gaining ground, said Larry Freed, chief executive of ForeSee Results, which sponsored the ACSI report.

“People have gotten comfortable with the (Yahoo) interface,” he said. “They’ve also done a good job in continuing to be dominant in communities and sub-functions of the portal. That’s always been Yahoo’s strength.”

While Google’s search functions remain strong, when it comes to the Web, customers look for marked improvements from year to year to say they are more satisfied, he said.

“For the average consumer, what you see with Google is what you saw three years ago,” Freed told Reuters.

While Google has developed its own e-mail, desktop office and chat applications, among other features, they have not drawn enough attention to them among regular users, he said.

“Google needs to figure out a way to take advantage of those great applications they’ve developed,” Freed said. “Not necessarily through advertising, but better marketing.”

The article goes on to discuss how Ask.com fares among search rivals. Still, I would’ve liked to see numbers on “shareholder satisfaction” — and even that might improve with better marketing.

We’ll be trying out a mechanism for publishing comments from a special subset of readers: those people or organizations who were actual participants in the story in question. Our long-term vision is that any participant will be able to send in their comments, and we’ll show them next to the articles about the story. Comments will be published in full, without any edits, but marked as “comments” so readers know it’s the individual’s perspective, rather than part of a journalist’s report.

Looks to me like another opportunity for transparency and spin to get pureed in the media blender — for better and for worse. What do you think?

How will they do that? By transforming the mobile experience, of course.

Yesterday, we discussed how Google’s WiMax deal with Sprint makes sense. Today, the mobile revolution seems imminent. Google’s feeling double-lucky . . .

Stephen Arnold, a Kentucky-based analyst who has been tracking Google with trainspotting accuracy for a number of years, has found 17 telephony-related patents and patent applications by Google and another dozen with a tangential link, says an article in Red Herring. Even if Google does not plan to commercialize all those bells and whistles, it still means that “Eleven to 12 percent of Google’s innovation effort since 1999 is in telco,” says the analyst.

What’s next on the agenda? The analyst believes Google is working on a new kind of “doubly lucky” predictive search for mobile devices. This will take users directly to search results, incorporating location and time of day into the findings, and will even use a form of predictive typing to guess at what the user wants to find–not unlike predictive word programs like T9 that are used in SMS. All of this will be in aid of reducing the time it takes to engage with the Internet on a mobile, he says in an interview with Red Herring.

Might they be triple-lucky? Today’s New York Times reports that the FCC has agreed to play nice during its upcoming spectrum auction.

If you haven’t realized, Google’s taking search to the next level. Contextual, temporal, and geographical relevance is the name of the game.

Whatever happens with the upcoming spectrum bid, Google’s mobile ambitions are on solid ground. The only question is: Do you feel lucky?

Well… Do ya?

[*UPDATE: ClickZ reports of two "highly observant search bloggers" who've noticed what appears to be behavioral targeting from Google.]

[Cue laughter and eye-rolling.]

Enter Google’s deal with Sprint, and its promise to bid at least $4.6 billion at the FCC’s upcoming spectrum auction for the coveted 700-megahertz range. This frequency is the ultimate sweet-spot for broadcasting, and it’s been collecting dust ever since you stopped adjusting rabbit ears on your TV.

Why such a bold move? SiliconValleyWatcher’s Tom Foremski believes Google will become a wireless telco with its own fat backbone:

Google is not interested in search. It is interested in connecting the dots in user behavior. My cell phone can tell Google a huge amount of information about my user behaviors. And as Om Malik at Business 2.0 GigaOm, rightly points out, location is a powerful thing when you are in the contextual ad business…

Still, Foremski doesn’t see WiMax as the answer. He proposes that Google change its model entirely, and morph into a telco. But the thing is, as ComputerWorld reports, Sprint’s doing it anyway…

Mobile WiMAX should provide far superior performance than the cellular operators’ 3G networks and Sprint has said it would charge less. In simple terms, mobile WiMAX would give Sprint at least a two-year lead over its competitors in terms of providing fast wireless broadband access.

Even more important, Sprint has said it would be an open network. By contrast, Sprint’s cellular competitors think the world is clamoring for walled-garden closed networks with overpriced service plans.

Meanwhile, the likes of PBS’s Robert X. Cringely have, well, cringed at the idea. “Is Google on crack?” Cringely seems to think so…

[...] what Google has done is a bold and foolish act in which it is hard to find an upside for the company. If they intended to actually win the auction, which I wish they would, then they wouldn’t have tried setting these conditions. They would just bid a truckload of money and walk away with the spectrum. But this thing they did do, what is it? It makes no sense at all, and one could argue, in fact, that is fiduciary suicide.

[...] This could be a fake, a head feint on Google’s part. By attempting to set these conditions on any eventual auction winner, Google is tacitly telling the mobile carriers that it really doesn’t intend to bid or doesn’t intend to bid above the $4.6 billion threshold. Emboldened by this the telcos, who are also arrogant and have a kind of reptilian craftiness, may decide to save their resources and only bid, say, $10 billion. But what if Google bids $20 billion? Well then it’s a whole new ballgame.

I hope that is Google’s plan, but I fear that it isn’t.

Like Cringely, Marketing Pilgrim’s Andy Beal thinks Google might be bluffing…

[...] Threatening to become a wireless carrier is one sure way to get the attention of those already in the mobile space. Surely the likes of Verizon and AT&T would be willing to accommodate Google’s partnership ambitions, just so long as the company stays out of their business.

Perhaps. Time will tell if it really is a bluff, but a Sprint/Google network would work. Google provides the ads while Sprint manages the network. Why is this such a stretch? Beal’s skepticism seems healthy, but Cringely’s is way overblown.

Google isn’t on drugs. Google is the drug.

Google’s Objective: Organize All the World’s Information

But to what end?

By organizing, cataloging, delivering, and analyzing the intentions and behavior of people, they’ve learned how to make lots of money. Google has always been more focused on distribution and delivery than they have been on advertising. Sure, the ads are where Google’s revenue comes from, but it’s a symptom — not the cause — of their current distribution model: search.

Now, close your eyes for a moment (or at least squint so you can still read this) and picture network that doesn’t require you going to Google.com or using a freaking browser toolbar to get table-scrap ads shoved in your face — highly relevant ones at that. Who’s searching now?

So, now for my own spectrum speculation:

• Google will bid as much as it takes to win the auction.
• A revenue share with Sprint will allow advertising to pay for the whole enchilada.
• Pure-play broadband providers will continue to distinguish themselves with premium “last-mile” delivery, but they’ll have to get real about pricing. (Gen Y doesn’t fear an open network.)
• Other wireless carriers won’t take long to flirt with Google.

The Campaign Optimizer may propose any combination of the following changes:

• Change daily budget.
• Add new keywords.
• Delete keywords.
• Change keyword matching options.
• Adjust keyword cost-per-click (CPC) bids.

This is certainly going to help many of the people who set their AdWords account and have left them on autopilot, hoping to get a great return. Google acknowledges that they want to continue to increase the capabilities of the Campaign Optimizer. Of course, GrokDotCom readers know optimizing your ad spend is only half the battle. Once you get them to click on your Google AdWord, you need to provide them with the proper scent and persuasive experience in order to get them to take the action you want them to take. Very few businesses — other than Google — make money by getting people to just click on the ads.

This is another step in the right direction for Google.