Is there something in the water that propels Seattle's entrepreneurs to focus on online travel and real estate. I don't get it.
The latest Seattle startup to pre-launch ... comes from some former Foddog execs, which includes a former manager of mine at HouseValues, Tom Romary.
The product is likened to a bookmarking pad to track airline ticket prices - allowing users to find the best deals on specific itineraries and ultimately save money. Looks like the business model will come from generated airline fees, advertising and potentially other fees. I'm happy to say that I haven't seen anything like it so far and it could prove to be a very useful consumer tool.
As usual, TechCrunch broke the initial story. Read more ... link.
Monday, April 30, 2007
Monday, April 23, 2007
Supplier Power & Google Economy
Earlier this month, Google made a little boo-boo in their Ad Words system whereby they turned off many keywords for their customers and increased minimum keyword bids to very high levels (upwards of $10 a click) that became cost prohibitive to run campaigns. See below the dotted line for their explanation of this.
As a result of this snafu, I thought about all the companies out there who rely on CPC advertising for generating sales for their businesses so that they can pay the bills and their employees. The Google economy is big - with a current run rate of almost $16 billion and backed by a $150 billion market cap.
When parts of this bustling train come to a screeching stop, it reverberates. I am certain (very certain) that this put a mighty scare into all the small to medium (and big) businesses who rely on Google as their primary source for customer/sales acquisition.
Doesn't this make you wonder ...
When will people (meaning businesses) start to realize that they have to build other online channels and spread some of that channel risk around? I guess it's easy to be lazy when your largest supplier is meeting your needs. But no reason to be.
Shouldn't we all be scared of that awful b-school term, supplier power. I'm not a Google hater but there needs to be a much more competitive market in the paid search space so customers can make choices and aren't beholden to a hegemonic supplier (no offense Yahoo and MSN).
In the words of the bellicose Emeril, I would like Yahoo, MSN, et al. to "step it up a notch!"
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Unexpected Minimum Bid Increases
As a result of this snafu, I thought about all the companies out there who rely on CPC advertising for generating sales for their businesses so that they can pay the bills and their employees. The Google economy is big - with a current run rate of almost $16 billion and backed by a $150 billion market cap.
When parts of this bustling train come to a screeching stop, it reverberates. I am certain (very certain) that this put a mighty scare into all the small to medium (and big) businesses who rely on Google as their primary source for customer/sales acquisition.
Doesn't this make you wonder ...
When will people (meaning businesses) start to realize that they have to build other online channels and spread some of that channel risk around? I guess it's easy to be lazy when your largest supplier is meeting your needs. But no reason to be.
Shouldn't we all be scared of that awful b-school term, supplier power. I'm not a Google hater but there needs to be a much more competitive market in the paid search space so customers can make choices and aren't beholden to a hegemonic supplier (no offense Yahoo and MSN).
In the words of the bellicose Emeril, I would like Yahoo, MSN, et al. to "step it up a notch!"
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Unexpected Minimum Bid Increases
Last Friday, during a routine infrastructure update, we experienced a technical issue that significantly increased the minimum bids for some keywords. Because the maximum CPC for these keywords was not changed, a number of impacted keywords became inactive for search, resulting in fewer leads for some advertisers. This technical issue was completely unrelated to the Quality Score updates that we have planned for later this week. We sincerely apologize for any disruption that it may have caused to your traffic. Below, we've answered a number of questions that we've heard since Friday:
When was this issue resolved?
This issue was resolved by our engineers on Saturday morning (PST) for the vast majority of impacted keywords. The minimum bids for these keywords have since returned to normal.
Will you be issuing credits?
Once we have completed our analysis of the impact, we'll automatically issue credits to advertisers who overpaid due to this issue. As soon as these credits have been applied, we'll email the affected advertisers to let them know.
I paused some of my ad groups because the minimum bids increased and they are still unusually high. What should I do?
If you paused any of your ad groups on Friday due to this issue, we recommend that you unpause them, but do not raise your maximum CPC. Unpausing your ad group should allow the minimum bid to return to normal without taking any other action.
Will this happen again?
Our engineers have been working tirelessly to understand why this issue occurred and to ensure that the proper measures are in place so that this is not repeated in the future.
Does this issue reflect the upcoming Quality Score improvements?
No, this issue is not related to our upcoming Quality Score improvements, which remain scheduled for later this week.
We greatly apologize for this issue. Please let us know if you have additional questions that you'd like us to answer on the blog.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)