How far off are we from Google auctioning off behavioral “meta data” gleaned from Web surfers within a specific geography typing “The North Face Denali Ski Jacket” into Google.com and then helping the winning advertiser place geo-targeted radio or magazine advertising buys in the region of strongest demand?

On the heels of last week’s Search Engine Strategies conference in New York, I’m left with better perspective on Google’s (NASDAQ: GOOG) advertising market growth plan—to transfer the success of its auction-based AdWords and AdSense platform to other forms of media.  Yet Google may have a fall-back plan if advertisers reject the transfer of its highly successful ad selling innovation. 

The “Attention” Model
Simply stated, second to transferring its successful ad platform to radio and print media, Google looks to become the King of all Attention Meta-data. 

What exactly is this new “attention" world all about and why is it being talked up by the movers-and-shakers out in Silicon Valley lately?  From Newscorp’s acquisition of social networking site, MySpace to Google’s acquisition of Web analytics solution provider, Urchin we can see a clear grab for what is, in fact, piles and piles of data that measure the “attention” (and behavior) of Web users—sometimes on an individual basis (raising serious privacy concerns) and sometimes in aggregate.  How to make money using the “Attention Model” is still being hashed out by thought-leaders like Steve Gillmor and, of course, is hotly debated based on its fundamental use of what consumers/users consider private—one’s gestures and actions while using the Web.

Evidence
Urchin (a pile of data describing precisely how users interact with eCommerce sites) is merely one example of Google’s plan B.  Indeed, as John Battelle points out Google is looking to take the success of its AdWords “advertising auctions” model and transfer them.  This has little to do with the “Attention” concept but if it fails what is Google left with?  Again, piles and piles of data that, at least, measure behavior and attention of users. 

As an example, Google can match searching activity of users in a particular zip code (demand for products/services) with radio ad buys covering that same zip code.  Powerful… but if advertisers reject the notion of buying radio and print ads through an auction Google would be left with the information it already has—describing geographic demand.  Nielsen/NetRatings and Arbitron data suddenly looks weak.

From Google’s Mouth
Today, Google is able to help advertisers take virtually every product to market based on its SKU identifier, model number and a variety of other product-specific information that users type into its search engine.  That’s huge and highly unlike selling on the radio or in print… BUT consider the residual data Google is left with.

As stated last week by Google’s Tim Armstrong, VP of Advertising Sales…

“The information that comes out of digital media such as search and contextual targeting is transferable to other media… Advertisers wanted to see if we could apply some of the measurably and accountability of search to contextual targeting, and we launched that several years ago.” (AdSense)

The information, says Armstrong. 

Google is clearly gearing up to transfer its already successful innovations and leverage current advertiser relationships… yet I wonder how serious they’re looking at competing with those who measure “attention” and behavior.  I also wonder if Google will be at the center of the “attention measurement” game (assuming there is one) in years to come.

Increasingly, bean counters (CFO’s) at retail and catalog companies are taking aim at their Web affiliate programs by assigning audit task forces to uncover waste and fraud within the channel.  At the heart of such actions is a serious desire to root out “hidden costs” that are associated with affiliate programs.  These costs are often viewed as an additional “tax” on orders that would otherwise be delivered.  These include affiliate orders involving:

1) Adware and spyware (involving illegitimate commissions)
2) Search affiliates who used trademark/brand terms to “intercept” traffic already bound for the marketer’s site (assigning a cookie, earning a commission)

“Don’t we already own these customers?”

In addition to the above affiliate tactics being troublesome a larger question has popped into the minds of marketers as they rush forward.  At the heart of the matter lies loyalty and motivation—who rightly deserves credit for creating the sale.

“Aren’t we already investing in other media to earn these orders?”

Indeed, marketers are slowly realizing that they spend in many other ways in order to earn a sale from existing customers—through paid Web media (pay-per-click) arrangements with comparison shopping sites, radio and television ads, catalog and direct mailings, etc.  Affiliate programs were built on a false pretense: affiliates always deliver new customers and are always, solely, responsible for creating the sale.

In fact, other media costs are usually involved and audits are revealing the truth about affiliate programs.

The Last Marketing Channel Wins
Some savvy marketers are growing increasingly uncomfortable paying more than one party for a sales transaction.  In fact, some are going as far as only providing an affiliate with credit (commission) upon an immediate or 24 hour conversion to sale.  Others are creating tracking mechanisms—outside of affiliate networks—that allow them to pay affiliates only if they were the last MARKETING CHANNEL to refer the customer. 

As an example, an affiliate sends a user from its site to the marketer’s site.  A 30 day cookie (commission earnings period) is set.  The user clicks off and doesn’t purchase but returns 10 days later as a result of the marketer’s email campaign.  A transaction results and the affiliate cookie automatically negated by the marketer prior to passing on any data to the affiliate solution provider.

Affiliates & Affiliate Networks: Lose Lose
Who loses?  The affiliate network and the affiliate.

In fact, many affiliates themselves don’t realize this is occurring.  Close examination of marketers terms & conditions reveals an increasing number of marketers use this technique for a variety of reasons… some mentioned above.  They simply don’t shout it from the mountain tops and bury it in the legalese.  Don’t ask, don’t tell.

Are you concerned about affiliates adding a “tax” to your orders and/or leads?  Click on Comments below and share your thoughts.

If you’re an advertiser interested in dominating paid search results based on certain search terms/keywords then listen up—you need not rely on affiliates to get the job done nor follow Google’s rules… so says Google itself.  Simply purchase URLs to use as your landing page (re-directing to your actual URL is permitted, of course) and set up a few different charge cards that tie to a few different Google Adwords accounts.  Done!

Google (GOOG) will do anything to bypass middle-men and form direct relationships with large and mid-sized advertisers/brands.  Indeed, the company will even assist advertisers in circumventing its own rules such as the “single URL, single ad term” rule instituted in January 2005. 

Witness one example of many that are not as obvious.

Here we see Priceline dominating the Google search results on its own brand using Priceline.net as a URL that simply re-directs to Priceline.com.  They’re even using their Commission Junction account to monitor the impact of this particular advertising tactic… which, I’m told by various advertisers over the course of the last month, is commonly practiced and endorsed by Google.  Apparently the company is going as far as holding clients’ hand through the process and assuring them the practice is permitted.

In the end, the January 2005 rule change caused affiliates to run out and acquire more URLs (to try and keep dominating search results pages) AND gave the notion to advertisers themselves who, over the last year, have come to own various other URLs and break the rule.

Mom and dad always told me that rules were rules and that you couldn’t have multiple rules that suited your needs.  Mom and dad were wrong when it comes to Google-style advertising via AdWords.  Rules of convenience apply when Google’s in charge—from its selective need to divulge private information in China (violating fundamental civil rights) to its selective need to help advertisers break its own rules designed to remove “ad clutter.” It’s all about the money and, moreover, building the direct relationship with advertisers. 

The final installation of my interview with spyware/adware expert, Ben Edelman is now available.  For all previous parts please visit out special page dedicated to this exclusive series.

PART FIVE
0:00 - Introduction
0:19 - Does doing the right thing mean alienating affiliates?
1:20 - Are affiliate networks motivated - or not - to do the right thing?
3:11 - Fixing the system: Networks, affiliates & contracts.
4:53 - There’s hope if advertisers push networks and/or network competition increases
6:00 - How to get alerted to new podcasts. 

Just got home from Affiliate Summit 2006 in Las Vegas.  Great event put on by Shawn Collins and Missy Ward.  Congratulations to them for their success in hosting a growing conference.  (Unlike many of the declining conferences I’ve attended that past few years)

The networking allowed me to catch up with many old friends and business acquaintances, and to make some new friends.  In addition, there were some great educational sessions as well.  I was particularly interested in this part of the conference, as I’m in the process of launching my own educational services company, Conference Call University

Some things that came out of the conference:

Fredrick Marckini from iProspect gave a very enlightening presentation on the presence of search in our lives.  Not just on the Internet, but on our mobile phones, cable programming guides and more.  If you missed this one, I highly recommend you download the PDF HERE

Anne Holland from MarketingSherpa was also great (as usual).  She discussed “Top 5 Affiliate Marketing Opportunities for 2006” You can check out her PDF HERE.  Pay close attention to the part about landing pages.  Simple idea, a lot of power.  And yes, it’s something most of us KNOW, it’s just that most of us don’t DO IT!

One of the most valuable nuggets of information came from Jeff Barr, Web Services Evangelist for Amazon.  He was talking about all of the many developer tools and API’s that are offered by Amazon Web Services.  Many were tools that only the most tech-savvy in the audience could relate to, and the audience was getting glassy-eyed.  Then he got to the final bullet of his presentation, Mechanical Turk.  The audience suddenly came to life, including me!  This is an AMAZING tool! 

You can check out the complete story of the original original Mechanical Turk here, but essentially, Amazon took the name because it combines what humans do best, with what machines do best, making the sum greater than the parts.  Using the Web as central repository for tasks, and humans as the intelligent nodes in the background, Mechanical Turk creates a most impressive distributed network that can achieve complex tasks fast and cheap. Some uses Mr. Barr cited for the Amazon Mechanical Turk:

*Internally, Amazon is using Mechanical Turk in their book scanning project to identify the orientation of Japanese text.  Japanese text can be written vertically or horizontally, and Amazon needed to figure out how to write software that could recognize which orientation the text was so it could be scanned properly.  They figured it would take a couple million dollars in programming time to create a system to do this.  Enter Mechanical Turk.  By utilizing the distributed human network, scanned pages are sent to human editors, who can simply glance at it and determine the orientation.  For a cost of only pennies, the editors provide Amazon with the vertical vs. horizontal answer. 

*A9 is using it for their Maps project, which seeks to create a directory where you put in an address, and it will pull up the GPS coordinates of a location, as well as an actual picture of the location.  So if you are going to look for a particular office building in an unfamiliar city, by using A9 Maps, you could pull up a picture of the building before you travel there so you know what it looks like.  A9 is using Amazon Turk to manage the distributed network of thousands of people who are driving around, taking pictures of buildings, and entering them in a database.

*A web site called CastingWords set up a podcasting transcription services using Mechanical Turk.  Simply upload your podcast, and Castingwords carves it up into 30 second chunks, and sends it to hundreds of people for transcription.  Once it is transcribed, the text is sent back through the system, compiled in order, and sent back to you.  The whole process can actually be done in as little as a half-hour, and costs $0.42 per audio minute.  About one-third the price of traditional transcription!

Mechanical Turk is in Beta right now, but is available to be customized with any use you can think of.  I can think of about ten great ideas right now, so I’ve got to go....

Part four of my five part series of interviews with spyware/adware expert, Ben Edelman is now available.  For all previous parts please visit out special page dedicated to this exclusive series.