Insider Chatter by Donna Bogatin

Are VideoEgg’s ears ringing? Just days ago, VideoEggg rocked Manhattan’s Times Square with the message that IT’S THE ONLINE ENGAGEMENT METRIC, STUPID, at its sponsored affair designed to spur Madison Avenue agency interest in VideoEgg’s new pay for engagement performance ad offering.

Today, Microsoft declares–via three short on details PR paragraphs–a “new reporting standard” for digital campaign performance dubbed “engagement mapping.” Will VideoEgg feel one-upped? Unlikely, Microsoft signed on as the flagship VideoEgg “engagement” debut advertiser!

Engagement is expensive, though, as the VideoEgg “Engaement Debate” host, CMO Troy Young, reiterated at the Hard Rock Cafe last week, via a rolling overhead message. Microsoft ought to know! Redmond is paying “under” 50 cents per “view,” according to Universal McAnn, as cited by AdWeek via VideoEgg.

Talk about CPMs! How about “under” $500 for 1000 “views.” What exactly is a view, though? Engagement is not only expensive, it is ambiguous!

Advertisers pay on an “engagement” basis – that is when a user rolls over the ad and the advertiser’s full screen creative is displayed.

It doesn’t SOUND very engaging! How engaged are prolific Web multi-taskers, after all?

The allmighty Google click isn’t all it is cracked up to be either, though! SEE my VideoEgg report: MySpace To Google (Round 2): Text Clicks Do NOT Rule! VideoEgg Report

Bottom advertiser ROI line? Savvy, deep pocketed brand advetisers will continue to conduct their own, proprietary econometric modeling to ensure that every single penny they disperse on Web advertising–regardless of mechanism or venue–yields measurable contibution to sales of product, as CPG advertiser Bayer Healthcare underscored repeatedly at the VideoEgg conference.

Bottom brand advertising line for the Web’s front runner? Top tier marketers are not swayed by any media platform’s noble talk of “accountabiltiy,” including Google speak. The only accounting Bayer relies on, for example, is its own.

MORE: VideoEgg Rocks: Debuts AdFrames in Silicon Alley: Google Next?

ALSO:  MySpace On Google: Sorry, ‘NO Truth’ To $900 Million Rumors and Facebook Meltdown: Is Twitter Next? and FriendFeed: Got Google Millions? Who Needs Revenues! and Google vs. Microsoft: The REAL Health Platform War Story

PLUS: Why Obsession is GOOD for Startups, and Microsoft

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN 

What a coincidence? Just hours ago, I discussed how Google would undoubtedly soon be on VideoEgg’s advertising tail, again! Today, Google announces its latest attempt to make money through video advertising.

BUT, unfortunately for Google, neither its Google Video or YouTube have yielded “material” revenues, Google CEO Eric Schmidt once again acknowledged in the company’s annual SEC reporting this month.

Will Google’s newest stab, dubbed AdSense for Video, have better luck? Long-term poential is unclear, but Google will undoubtedly be challenged out of the video gate and is NOT moving full video steam ahead at present. What’s more, Google is partnering with direct video advertising competitors for distribution, confirming it does NOT have sufficient video advertising clout on its own.

Google’s new video ad options include “text” overlays. The purportedly almighty Google text “clicks” are NOT all they are made out to be, however, a MySpace executive advised yesterday at the “Engagement” conference put on by Google competitor VideoEgg.

In a series of four panels, about two dozen agency, programming and consumer marketing execs discussed the need to “engage” people on the Web via content and interactivity that spurs emotional involvement. Panelist Benjamin Ezrick, Oglivy Interactive, though, incredulously offered the Google “click” as the only irrefutable measure of online user engagment. Co-panelist Chris George, MySpace, however, quickly reported on the fallacy of a supposedly allmighty click:

People who click don’t necessarily convert and people who see ads but don’t click can convert.

Just last week, MySpace colleague Arnie Gullov-Sing shared other Google fallacies at the OMMA Behavaioral conference, as I report and analyze in MySpace To Google: Learn How To Sell Advertising, OMMA Report. The MySpace exec also debunked some myths about Facebook advertising, as I discuss in MySpace to Facebook: NO ‘Reach, Relevancy, Results’! OMMA Report.

MORE: VideoEgg Rocks: Debuts AdFrames in Silicon Alley: Google Next? and Microsoft Steals VideoEgg’s Thunder? Google Ultimate Loser

ALSO: MOBILE Visions? Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL Open Up: NOT Google! OMMA Report and NYT Accepts Google Muzzle: Bombs YouTube NYC Story and Health Vault: Hey, Google, Get With the Microsoft Medical Program! and Facebook Meltdown: Is Twitter Next?

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

Thw Wall Street Journal claims the richest man in the world scaling back on his “social graph” usage is ”the most damning indictment of ”social networking technology.” REALLY? Bill Gates is also scaling back on what he does at the company he founded, Microsoft: Any personal computer technology “indictment” there?

There was a Facebook indictment yesterday, it came form MySpace. Arnie Gullov-Singh, VP Product Mangement, Fox Interactive Media, had his competitive “social networking technology” fun at the OMMA Behavioral conference in New York City, at the expense of Facebook, as I present in MySpace to Facebook: NO ‘Reach, Relevancy, Results’! OMMA Report.

I asked Gullov-Sing about the future prospects for MySpace advertising, both in-house prime and the lower grade, out sourced Google variety. My question to panelist Gullov-Singh:

I appreciate your calling Facebook a “competitor”; Mark Zuckerberg refuses to return the favor. 

In any event, do social networks risk becoming too popular for their own good? As user generated content grows like a weed, what will be the impact on ad quality and pricing? Will users be subjected to more “punch the monkey” ads?

Gullov-Sing avoided the seemingly undeniable inventory glut issue, hailing MySpace is popular among advertisers and its CPMS are doing just fine, while offering no hard data to support his contentions.

After the panel, I sought specifics from Gullov-Sing and pointed out that MySpace partner Google itself lamented MySpace ad quality and pricing, in an indirect dig during its Wall Street conference call.

Gullov-Sing told me that there are a lot of reasons for Google not doing well at MySpace. I suggested to Gullov-Sing that perhaps MySpace is not providing necessasry internal MySpace data to Google so it is best able to optimize.

Gullov-Sing indicated to me that Google doesn’t understand the sales process and thinks technology is the answer to everything.

If Google really did learn how to sell advertising like the rest of the media world, though, would its MySpace performance really improve? After all, MySpace has its direct hands on the “good” MySpace ads goods, while Google is an outside ad serving player, playing around with runnerup inventory.

MySpace inventory distribution appears to match the industry standard put forth at the OMMA conference by Peter Horan. The CEO of IAC Media & Advertising said a sites’ advertising is generally about half direct-sale, premium ad inventory and half of lower quality, resold by aggregators.

I have been questioning the quality and “salability” of MySpace’s inventory available to Google since the $900 million deal was announced in 2006 during a joint Fox Interactive Media and Google conference call.

Fox Interactive has continued to retain exclusive rights to directly sell its most desirable, and most lucrative, display advertising to Fortune 500 advertisers. In addition to Google being exclusive search and keyword targeted advertising sales provider, the agreement has provided for Google to have an option on My Space’s unsold, “remnant” display advertising: a “right of first refusal on display advertising sold through third parties on Fox Interactive Media’s network.”

Google CEO Eric Schmidt was well aware of the MySpace monetization challenge when he made a long term, expensive pledge to MySpace, but believed the vaunted Googley technology would prevail. Schmidt in 2006:

“We are not going to cover MySpace with ads,” he said, noting that Google carefully analyzes what sort of ads encourage users to click on what sort of pages to produce the most revenue. “It turns out the right answer is to show fewer, better ads.” (NYT)

It turns out, though, that Schmidt’s Google did NOT, and still does not, have the right MySpace answer, demeuring now that Google is “still in the learning stages of how it monetizes social networking”:

We have had a challenge in Q4 with social networking inventory as a whole and some of the monetization work we were doing there didn’t pan out as well as we had hoped. But we are continuing the efforts and we are still optimistic about future quarters.

MySpace, on the other hand, is optimistic about the present! 

PLUS: MySpace To Google (Round 2): Text Clicks Do NOT Rule! VideoEgg Report

MORE: MOBILE Visions? Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL Open Up: NOT Google! OMMA Report and Henry Blodget Tech Ticker Puts Yahoo Finance at SEC Risk and LinkedIn Preps Spy Network: Is YOUR Company Safe?

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

The GOOG fuel remains stubbornly 99% pure–online AdWords and AdSense–as the Googleplex has been ubable to extend the Google magic profitably offline. What about mobile? Is Eric Schmidt’s grand mobile ambition destined to fade away just as his dreams of personalized, GPS fueled, in-car radio “targeted” ads have?

(SEE: Google CEO In-Car Radio Ad Vision Fading)

Moreover, will a “seismic” consumer shift to smartphones provoke a reciprocal marketer “wave of change” towards mobile advertising? The Internet “titans” are gearing up for such a projected user and advertiser bonanza, according to views presented yesterday at the OMMA Mobile conference in New York City.

Google has been preaching that an “open” mobile world is the future of wireless. Nevertheless, while competitive peers Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL took to the open stage in midtown Manhattan, not a sole Googler showed up from the NYC Googleplex to join in an open wireless OMMA conversation. No surprise, the Googler in Chief’s feel good PR slogans rarely match what the (once) $200 billion market cap corporation does in the for-profit field, Android included.

The AOL spokesperson offered the most refreshing, real world “big guys” assessment yesterday of the mobile opportunity, circa today: Don’t expect any game-changing, exotic breakthroughs in the coming months, Jason Gruber indicated. While the mobile opportunity is not as “sexy” as it is made out ot be, it is nevertheless very real, he underscored.

“The reach is not there” now, though, Gruber said, noting that 35 million daily mobile Web users in the U.S. is not sufficient “scale.” Will hoped for increases in 3G handset penetration seal the mobile advertising deal? Not necessarily.

Speaking on the ”giant killers” panel, Barry Chu, of whilte label mobile search provider Medio Systems, shared that the futures of each of the entrepreneurial mobile ventures represented is dependent upon projected mobile “hockey stick” growth manifesting by no later than next year.

An eventual consumer uptake in mobile Web use will not immediately translate into advertising success, however. The Weather Channel sells integrated, cross-platform media buys, but is challenged by a lack of mobile-centric measurements, Louis Gump conveyed.

Gump made a personal plea for the industry to move “beyond the click” as a basis for valuing the worth of mobile advertising campaigns. Gump is optimistic that mobile marketers will be shown value through:

Raising awareness,
Increasing message association,
Enhancing brand favorability,
Building purchase consideration.

What about CPMs? I asked. The industry has not standardized around anything, including rate cards.

In preparing for the OMMA Mobile conference, Media Post’s Steve Smith underscored that he sought to address “head-on” the “questions and myths that continue to retard mobile marketing growth”:

Is there really not enough scale here?
Are CPMs really outlandish?
Is it really just a youth medium?
Is it just too hard to put together a mobile campaign and navigate the technology?

Unfortunately for the immediate future of the mobile industry, all of Smith’s supposed myths were upheld, intelligently, as real-world obstacles for the near term.

ALSO:  Google Killer Cuill? Ex-Googler Startups Pose NO Threat: FriendFeed, Howcast, Zillow and Why Silicon Alley VCs Should Do Blogging Due Diligence, Too and NYC Braces for Subway Cell Phone Rage: 5 million Yakkers Daily

PLUS: Google Apps Meets Les Miserables: Enterprise IT Team DREAMS Big and Yahoo: Beware Google AND Embrace Microsoft! and Google Execs Silent On NYC Print, Radio, TV Promises 

MORE: How Web 2.0 Meetups Displaced the New York Software Industry and Yahoos Rally: Beware Sticky Peanut Butter Tales

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

I broke the news in June of 2006 that Eric Schmidt, Google CEO, believes when he is listening to the radio in his car, radio ads should personally address him about his needs.

For example, while driving past a clothing store, a radio ad should remind Eric that he needs a pair of pants and instruct him to turn left at the upcoming clothing store. Schmidt shared his vision for GPS location-based delivery of highly targeted and personalized advertising via in-car radios at a luncheon with a group of publishing executives in New York City.

While Schmidt predicted a realization of his vision by June of 2008, he did not share his vision for how the Google owned dMarc Broadcasting, a “digital solutions provider for the radio broadcast industry,” would enable such digital ad delivery via car radios. Google acquired dMarc two years ago to bring “radio advertising to Google AdWords advertisers.”

Eighteen months later, I asked the Google Audio Ads New York sales rep, Joe Anastasi: 1) Where does Google Audio Ads stand in the realization of Eric Schmidt’s desired product development roadmap? and 2) Did Eric find his pants?

My query at last evening’s Advertising Club of New York’s “All Google” night, hosted by the NYC Googleplex, garnered the sole laugh of the night.

Eric Schmidt may NOT be laughing in Mountain View, however: There is NO such in-car radio ad product anywhere in apparent Google Audio Ads sight, despite the Googler in Chief’s hopeful boasting.

Mr. Anastasi nevertheless assured his boss is always handsomely attired: NO apparent need for personalized radio ad reminders!

MORE: Google TV Ads Auction: NO AdWords Buyer’s Remorse

ALSO: Why Google Worship is a BAD Call in 2008 and Google Knol: The End of Google.com, NOT Wikipedia and Microsoft Seeks Healthy Relationship with Google: Health Vault INTERVIEW and Yahoo Shareholder on Microsoft Bid: AOL, Time Warner All Over Again?

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

The Advertising Club of New York’s event last evening at the NYC Googleplex was billed an “All Google” advertising one. The “all” Google advertising sales represented, though, was merely of the non-money making variety: Google Print Ads, Google Radio Ads, Google TV Ads…NOT an AdWords or an AdSense rep was in Googley sight at the luxury Google cafeteria complex which hosted several hundred New York advertising and technology execs.

Nevertheless, the GOOG fuel money making stars WERE the star attractions, as all OTHER Google ad products depend, inevitably, on an ingtegrated, search advertising upsell pitch, unable to close their own independent ROI value propositions.

The cheery panel of Google cheerleaders professionaly spun their respective product spiels. Long Ellis, Head of TV Sales, however, seemed to have spun himself into a tizzy.

How happy is Ellis to be a Googler at last? The prospect of selling Google TV ”sent shivers down my spine,” Ellis gushed. After all, “if Google can’t do it, who can?” he reminded us.

Ellis may have no “remorse” in joining Google, but Google advertisers do, big time, the Google TV point man unwittingly advised. Ellis touted the advangtages of the Google TV bidding scheme; In so doing, however, a BIG marketer disadvantage of the world famous Google black box AdWords auction cash Google cow was apparent.

The Google TV point man assured New York marketers and media planners that the Google TV “auction theory” prervents “buyer’s remorse” because the winning bidder ends up paying the bid price of the runner up bidder.  WHAT ABOUT ADWORDS THEN? IS GOOGLE GIDDILY CAUSING MULTI BILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN ADVERTISERS’ “BUYERS’ REMORSE” becasuse it doesn’t adhere to the “auction theory” that Google TV ads does?

Apparently so. MORE ON GOOGLE ADWORDS “MAGIC”: Why Advertisers LOSE In Publicis, Google SEM Deal and
Yellow Pages Get Reprieve? The Myth of King Google Local Advertising ROI and
Reach Local Advertising? How Google Squeezes SEMs and AdWords Buyers and
Local Ad Sales War: Why Google is a Guaranteed Winner and
Google AdWords Plus Box: Local CPC Bidding War Unleashed! and
Google Apps & Maps: Enterprise and Local Business STILL Missing and
Google Zeitgeist: $200 University Payola AdWords Scam and
How Google AdSense FAILS Better Business Bureau and

PLUS: Frugal Google.org: How NOT To Save the World On $159,000 a Day and Google CEO In-Car Radio Ad Vision Fading and Microsoft Seeks Healthy Relationship with Google: Health Vault INTERVIEW and Yahoo Shareholder on Microsoft Bid: AOL, Time Warner All Over Again?

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN