Digital Marketing and Technological Insight

The monetization of any “Web 2.0″ website is a hot topic, regardless of how much traffic and/or buzz they have. At some point you have to make money, not just spend it. Digg, the leader in social bookmarking, announced yesterday their plans to further monetize their traffic by incorporating ads into the main Digg “river” that users can either Digg or Bury. How users react to the advertisement will determine how much the advertiser will end up paying.

Today, we’re announcing our plans to roll out a new advertising platform — Digg Ads. Digg Ads will give you more control over which advertisements are displayed on Digg. The more an ad is Dugg, the less the advertiser will have to pay. Conversely the more an ad is buried, the more the advertiser is charged, pricing it out of the system.

You can see what Digg Ads might look like here.

From a users perspective I like the concept of Digg Ads, of course having no ads would be ideal but Digg has a right to make money. However, having the ability to control what I want and don’t want to see makes the idea of integrated ads somewhat bearable. From an advertisers perspective I absolutely hate Digg Ads. First I cant imagine many ads will actually get Dugg very often, the majority of people will choose to bury ads - especially in the beginning. On top of that, not having a clear understanding of end cost isn’t appealing at all.

The concept of Digg Ads will surely  interest some advertisers enough to run a few tests. But, since there is no shortage of  high-traffic sites that target the same demographic , don’t expect Digg Ads to stay up for very long if it doesn’t catch on.

If you visit Bing.com today you will no longer see the a “coming soon” message - yes Bing, the new Google Killer from Microsoft is live and ready to be used.

So now what?

Well if you play around with Bing long enough you will start to realize that aside from the results being similar to what you saw from Live.com (I am assuming the  new algorithm is slowly being phased in) the new Bing is actually a good search engine. Along with relevant web, image and video results; Bing brings cool (and useful) new search features that aim to enhance the searching experience for users.

Better search engine, cool new useful features and a $100 million ad campaign…so what does this mean for the Search Engine Wars? Easy. Microsoft will gain a percentage of users, Yahoo will lose market share  and Google will still dominate. Looking at the data from Compete.com below, it is obvious that  Microsoft isn’t going to catch Google anytime soon, but if everything goes according to plan they should see the gap close.

The best case scenario for Bing and Microsoft entails a successful massive media campaign that draws a good amount of people to Bing to try it out for themselves. Of those people who visit and actually perform a search, a percentage of them become so impressed by the results / UX  that they either no longer go to Google as their first choice or use Bing as their secondary search engine.

Want another prediction? Bing will become the e-commerce / shopping search engine of choice for millions of people . This is where Bing has the opportunity to be a leader…

I just read an article on AdAge.com that talks about how Microsoft is going after Google with a new ad campaign and a new search engine called Bing. It seems like every few months there is the next “Google Killer” that promises to revolution search. Remember Cuil? Now the buzz is on Wolfram Alpha. The issue isn’t whether or not Google is the best search engine in regards to relevant results - it comes down to the fact that Google is good enough.

The software giant (Microsoft) is set to launch an $80 million to $100 million campaign for Bing, the search engine it hopes will help it grab a bigger slice of the online ad market. That’s a big campaign — big compared with consumer-product launches ($50 million is considered a sizable budget for a national rollout) and very big when you consider that Google spent about $25 million on all its advertising last year, according to TNS Media Intelligence, with about $11.6 million of that focused on recruiting. Microsoft, by comparison, spent $361 million. Certainly Google has never faced an ad assault of anything like this magnitude.

I love the name Bing for an online brand but hate it for the name of a search engine, how soon before we start seeing ads with “Bing! Your search is done” everywhere? Putting the name aside will Microsoft’s Bing be a better search engine? Possibly. Will the average user actually stop using Google because Bing is better? Probably not. Google is firmly entrenched as being synonymous with searching online and that won’t go away anytime soon. Google has the brand association that can not be bought …as long as people continue to  “Google it”, no other search engine stands a chance.

So what should Microsoft do? They should focus their ad campaign on being #2. Admit defeat, crown Google the king and go after Yahoo’s search share. A “We’re #2″ ad campaign will not only be effective but probably save the company millions. But Microsoft has billions in cash so they will have no problem spending whatever they want  - can’t wait to see all those articles talking about how they spent $100 million and upped their market share only 2%.

BING!

In this world of instant, on-demand, online gratification and 24/7/365 shopping very few things surprise me when it comes to e-commerce. In fact, I have basically come to believe that the almighty dollar is the only thing that matters to any, and every, company doing business online. Is this wrong? No, it isn’t - it is just how it is. However, this is why my whole perspective changed so dramatically this past weekend when I went to the website of a popular camera and video store called B&H Photo and Video. I am sure many of you are familiar with their “super center” in NYC - basically it is THE place for anything related to photo and video equipment. Being in the market for a new digital camera their website was the first place I thought of visiting…when I went their Saturday afternoon I was surprised to see the below message on their homepage:

Knowing how much business B&H does online I was very surprised to see that their website was “down” during such a peak time for shopping. I thought this was odd, but not totally out of the ordinary for an e-commerce site. However, after surfing around their website I came across the following message: “Please note that B&H does not process web orders from Friday evening to Saturday evening.” This message linked to the exact times they will be “down” for the next few weeks. Being “down” for this specific time period rang some bells in my head and I knew it had something to do with the Jewish religion (excuse my ignorance). After digging around I quickly realized that one of the most comprehensive and popular destinations in their category wasn’t taking orders for Shabbat. For the uneducated like me, Shabbat is the 7th day of the Jewish week and a day of rest in Judaism.

This completely blew me away. As you can see from the below screenshot, the option to checkout, no matter how many items you put in your shopping cart, was taken away. I attempted every conceivable way to purchase something on their site and it was impossible. I was certain their would be some sort of delayed ordering process in place…but nothing that I could find. During the Shabbat you could browse their website all you wanted but if you wanted to order something you had to wait.

The amount of money lost during the 24 hour +/- time period of Shabbat  is significant, however it is obvious the owners of the business could care less about the lost revenue and focus more on their core religious beliefs and principals. You have to admire this no matter where you stand when it comes to religion or business. How many e-commerce executives would be able to make this call? Not many.

This is the first time I have seen or heard of this - I would love to hear about any other examples of e-commerce websites having planned “shut downs” for religious or similar reasons.

Recently Google launched a new “options” feature  on their search results page.  After clicking the “Show Options” link a new left navigation opens that allows  the searcher to “slice and dice”  search results into more relevant chunks. Searchers can now focus their results by videos, forums, reviews, time or even a more visual representation.

So what does this mean for search behavior? Not much. How many general web searchers do you think will actually take the time or care to refine their search results? I would guess a tiny fraction of the millions of people who come to Google.com to do a search. Google’s success is based on its simplicity - other search engines have been giving visitors options for years and none of them caught on. People want instant gratification and are used to trusting the results Google puts forth. Why do you think the vast majority of people barely scroll below the fold or click to another search page? Hint: it isn’t because they found the most relevant search result.

From an SEO perspective this doesn’t change anything either. A good SEO strategy should already include Videos, Forums and Product Reviews, so if anything this just reinforces the importance of how SEO goes beyond just on-page optimization and linking.