Monthly Archives: February 2010

I’ve said for a while that mobile just isn’t here yet. Well, I’m starting to think it’s getting there now. Why?

For starters, the technology is a lot better than it was even a year ago. Smart phones are starting to get that all-important penetration into the phone market, so we can finally start considering how to reach these people.

The Evolution of Phones

Texting is always the first approach. It’s an established technology, and at least in Europe and Japan, it’s still popular. SMS marketing – or “Short Message System” marketing for those of you who had dates in high school – never really took off in the United States. I think it’s because we hardly ever walk anywhere, and few cities have trains to commute on. If you’re always in your car, you can’t read texts, right? Since they were so popular in these other places, it will be some time before they go away. They’re established technologies. It’s like waving a magic Hulu wand and expecting television to just disappear.

Esquire's cover using a QR code. It was simple, even arcane - but it signals the beginning.

So the phone thing didn’t take off here the way it did there. Once we started getting more functional phones, however, things got interesting. QR codes, augmented reality, apps… if you haven’t been paying attention, it feels like there’s this massively popular technology sweeping the land.

Truth be told, the technology is really in the hands of the people who love the technology. So far. That was the same case with the Internet originally, if you’ll remember. Before everyone had their Hotmail addresses or online news, the Internet was the domain of the geeks. No need to market to those people! They (who am I kidding? We) were a tiny niche, and everyone else was still watching television. Advertisers were beating their brains out trying to figure out how to sell to consumers splintered by cable. If only they knew how bad THAT would get, right?

So we are still in the early stages of the “next big thing.” Well, maybe the late early stages. After all, you can now pretty easily learn to write your own mobile app, or at least find someone to do it for you. (iPhone apps being the latest “get rich quick” scheme.) And if you want to brave the waters of SMS, the only barrier to you is cost. It’s pretty cheap to send out a bunch of text messages to people with even the most basic cell phones, but it still isn’t free. Yet.

Start thinking now about how your product can appeal to mobile phone owners, because we’re only a year or two from smart phones being the standard. As we speak, there are companies you’ve never heard of who are getting in early with their own phone business model, and I guarantee you they will be the ones that dominate the stock exchange in a few years.

This week, regulators in the United States and Europe approved the deal between Yahoo! and Microsoft. If you aren’t aware, Yahoo will soon get out of the search engine business to concentrate on their other cash centers. Instead, they will display Microsoft’s search results. Revenue will be shared between them, with Yahoo! doing the bulk of the consumer relations and new business acquisition for paid search.

If you’re running search campaigns on both, you’re going to have to get ready to scale down to a single one. I called Yahoo! and Microsoft this week to find out what this is going to entail.

Yeah. That just about sums it all up.

Get used to Microsoft AdCenter

By the end of 2010, Yahoo! will start migrating their clients’ campaigns over to Microsoft’s AdCenter. They don’t expect to have every campaign moved until Q1 2011. This means if you aren’t familiar with MS AdCenter yet, you need to start working with it. The good news here is that it is a LOT easier to use than the Yahoo! interface. That’s not really saying much, mind you – sneaking a grown cat onto a plane in your underwear is easier than the Yahoo! interface.

Don’t give up on Yahoo! yet

Personally, I haven’t seen a great deal of search traffic coming from Microsoft’s accounts, and Yahoo! still delivers. So why is Yahoo! selling? I have to guess paid search isn’t giving them as great an income as everything else is – but as an end user, Yahoo! search is just more productive.

So you need to start advertising with Microsoft soon if just to get used to it – but it won’t take up a very large part of your budget. Yahoo! will likely bring you more traffic for the immediate future. But when your campaign is switched, and suddenly you’re on both, the Microsoft traffic is going to jump incredibly.

Google is still King

I always throw this in, because it’s true, and people forget it: Microsoft is still third to Google, and the only thing they’ve done to change that is buy the guy in second place. If you want to know how the Big 3 ranked, comScore’s June 2009 report breaks down the market share of each. Microsoft’s market share was only twice of Ask.com’s. And they’re Ask.com! The only people who use Ask are Theodore Kaczynski and about 15 other guys who hate technology.

My point is, if you have a limited budget, don’t listen to the hype surrounding Bing. It isn’t there yet, and there’s nothing to suggest it will get there soon. Stick with Google for the time being. Remember, with paid search, you can get on the front page of a search engine’s results inside of 10 minutes if you need to. It’s not like natural search, where the work you do can take months to do you some good.