Google's Latest Move Toward Social Shopping
Google introduced seller ratings to its growing lot of ad extensions last month. In addition to titles, prices, and thumbnail images, a searcher now gets treated to a 1 to 5 scale indicating past customers' satisfaction with a particular merchant.
Ad extensions incentivize advertisers to educate themselves and adhere to Google's best practices in order to reap strong ROI, which ensures a smooth user experience in the process. They also allow Google's engineers to better understand search behavior and adapt the search algorithm accordingly.
The difference between these seller ratings and the other recent innovations to AdWords, however, is that this most recent announcement looks more and more like a thinly-veiled countermeasure to whatever is going on over at Facebook Inc.
Not long ago, AllFacebook.com raised a ruckus over Facebook's supposed intentions to make content available in Open-Graph enabled search results, only to be set straight by Facebook CTO Bret Taylor. While rumblings that Facebook is entering the search business may be overblown, the game-changing nature of this possibility isn't lost on us.
With a user base nearing 500 million users, Facebook's next big hit will likely be at the intersection of social media and e-commerce (note the 39 percent year-on-year growth in ad dollars pouring into advertising on Facebook, or the rise of self-contained social shopping environments like 1-800-Flowers' Facebook page).
Advertising spend on Facebook occupies a small share of what is being garnered by the search engines (eMarketer estimates the total search marketing pie in the United States at about $3.94 billion in 2010, putting Facebook's relative figure around 11 to 12 percent of that), but the folks over in Mountain View have their eye to the future. As online shopping behavior becomes more sophisticated, the notion of querying products and comparing vendors will become stale, and the leading edge of online consumers will begin to abandon that paradigm.
Instead, peer influence will become an increasingly important ingredient of a pleasant online shopping experience. After all, if faced with product reviews written by friends, versus those written by unknowns, which would you trust more? (This also explains why comparison shopping and trust are so conjoined in e-commerce environments.)
In the long run, the addition of the seller ratings ad extension benefits all parties.
Consumers are treated to a more transparent online shopping environment, which allows them to achieve higher satisfaction more quickly. Advertisers who practice good customer service are rewarded for doing so, and achieve better ROI on their digital marketing programs. And for Google, this is yet another way to weed out less competent advertisers who stand in the way of their more profitable counterparts.
The day might even come when a fourth beneficiary enters play -- if Google extends seller ratings to ads served on partner sites through AdSense, then publishers will likely also reap rewards in the form of revenues from increased click volumes.
Can Facebook deliver such ubiquitous goodwill to every stakeholder in the media equation? That's what remains to be seen.
Just one complaint for Google, though: why do the seller ratings only apply to merchants with an average rating of four stars or higher? This counteracts the basis of comparison shopping -- the difference between four and five stars is hardly a broad performance spectrum, and it's barely visible when measured in pixels on the screen.
Why not give advertisers with lower ratings (or an insufficient number of ratings) a chance to throw their hats in the ring? We can probably assume that their CTRs will be lower, but perhaps with more interesting inventory or more relevant promotions, they can still present the consumer with a compelling choice?
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Aardvark Joins with Google!
We’re thrilled to announce that Aardvark has been acquired by Google!
Aardvark has defined a new kind of social search: sometimes you want a person, not a web page, to answer your question. We’re extremely excited that Google shares our vision for how search can continue to evolve by including social features.
We have spent the past two years carefully designing and building Aardvark, combining our own vision with a rigorous user-driven development process. This acquisition represents an incredible opportunity to accelerate this development, working with some of the most amazing folks in the industry to offer a new kind of search to hundreds of millions of people.
As a first step, effective immediately, Aardvark will be available through Google Labs. Aardvark will remain fully operational and completely free, providing quick, helpful answers to all of your questions. You can sign up here.
As we move forward, we will continue working on Aardvark : improving its speed and quality, building exciting new features, responding to your feedback, and providing the highest level of support. Our top priority has been, and remains, providing a high-quality user experience.
We want to thank our great investors and advisors for helping make Aardvark a reality. And most of all, a big thank you to all the Aardvark users, for your incredible feedback and support. We’re honored by your participation in the social search revolution, and we’ll continue working hard to earn it.
We’ve put together a brief FAQ below to answer questions for our users and the press about the acquisition.
Onwards and varkwards!
- Max & Damon
Q: What is Aardvark
A: Aardvark is social search: ask any question and Aardvark will discover the perfect person in your network to answer in minutes. Aardvark launched a private beta in March, 2009, and has been growing rapidly since. Today people use Aardvark via vark.com, the Aardvark iPhone App, IM and email. Over the past few months Aardvark has had amazing reception by the industry and press, appearing in the New York Times, Time’s 50 Best Websites of 2009, TechCrunch, and winning runner-up as the Best New Product or Startup of 2009 at the Crunchies awards. Read more on our press page.
Q: Who’s building Aardvark?
A: The Aardvark Team is composed of about 30 people, with some of the best engineers and researchers in the industry. The team includes engineers from each of Silicon Valley’s major technology companies, four AI Ph.D.s, and founders from a dozen different successful startups.
Q: Why is Aardvark excited about joining Google?
A: We want social search to reach hundreds of millions people around the world, and joining with Google lets us reach that scale — we’re also excited to work with the team at Google: our company has a culture that was inspired by Google in many ways, and we have a lot of respect for the folks who work there.
Q: Will Aardvark keep running?
A: Yes! Aardvark will keep running and improving on a daily basis — over IM and email, on the Aardvark Mobile iPhone app, and on vark.com. Go ahead and ask a question just to make sure :-)
Q: What will happen to my Aardvark account?
A: It will keep working just as it does today.
Q: Can I still sign up for a new Aardvark account?
A: Yes! You can sign up here. Sign up is easy and quick, especially if you use your Google account to import your profile!
Q: Are you going to keep working on improving Aardvark?
A: Absolutely. You can expect us to keep introducing new features, fixing bugs, and improving the speed and quality of the service.
Q: What’s going to change about Aardvark?
A: The main thing that’s going to change is that we’ll be able to move even faster with the support of Google.
Q: Are my questions and answers going to show up on Google Search?
A: As always, your questions and answers are private by default, unless you choose to share them with your friends. Your questions and answers will show up in search results from Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search results if you choose to share them publicly. For more info about Google’s privacy policy, visit www.google.com/privacy.
Q: What’s going to happen to the Aardvark Team?
A: The Aardvark team will continue working together within Google, and we’re also excited to have other Google folks joining the team as we move forward. We’ll be primarily working on improving Aardvark and exploring ways to improve social features in other Google products.
Q: How can I apply to work/intern at Aardvark now that we’re at Google?
A: Aardvark recruiting is now a part of the Google recruiting process — you can apply to work on Aardvark within Google! If you’re interested in joining our team
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Savings.com Launches Shopping Related Answer Service!
Online answer services launched for shopping related questions and advices in real time from other people or friends. This site allows users to ask shopping related question and get answers from others.
Savings.com concepts are save shoppers money every day. Shoppers should be need to advice what they have to buy a product or service. People join the savings.com community; they got responses and conversations from community members through email.
"In a real-world shopping environment, people naturally consult friends and store clerks for advice, and we realized that the same real-time interaction was missing from the online shopping experience," said Loren Bendele, CEO of Savings.com.
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Google's Reported $100M-$200M Zynga Spend Real Key To 'Google Me' Social Platform?
Reports have it that Google has invested between $100 million and $200 million in social gaming platform Zynga. Beyond the actual size of the spend, the real question is whether this move will finally give the Mountain View-based giant the leverage it desperately needs to launch its own full-blown social platform, i.e. the rumored 'Google Me.'
Google Game Is The Name
TechCrunch first reported on the Google-Zynga "secretly" brokered deal, citing unnamed sources close to the situation. VentureBeat followed suit, confirming the "details of the deal" from its own anonymous source "familiar with the matter." What TechCrunch and VentureBeat both agreed upon is that Google made the investment directly (i.e. not through its Google Ventures arm) and the company is readying to launch a Google Game platform.
Google Me Noises
This is where it becomes really interesting. Back in early May, we had anticipated that the search behemoth would be boosting its social strategy as it was readying to hire a "Head of Social." At the time, we'd also anticipated external growth, i.e. acquisitions. In fact, one month before that, Google had already also hired Mark DeLoura as its game 'developer advocate' and at the same time recruited Erik Klau to head Google Profiles. When rumors started emerging (thanks to a tweet by Digg founder Kevin Rose) in late June that the search giant was seriously working on a Google Me social platform, the marriage of Buzz + Orkut + Google Profiles seemed not to have enough "oomph" to knock of social behemoth Facebook. And the confirmation by Facebook's former CTO, Adam d'Angelo, that the Google Me plan was for real did neither bring much more details nor lend more credit to it.
Google Me + Google Games = A Long-Term Social AND Gaming Strategy
However, the reported Google-Zynga link would totally change the perspective and help Google kill two birds with one stone (no, no reference to Twitter here): it could give Google the opportunity to bring to life both a gaming platform - Google Games - and a social platform - Google Me - through leveraging Zynga's attractiveness to hords of addicted fans and players as well as interlinking those players and their friends across the graph, which so far is only thoroughly exploited by Facebook. Add to that its Buzz platform, Orkut and Google Profiles... and we're actually starting to see some meat on the bones of the company's social ambition. Also, the hires of a head of social and games advocate totally make sense. Actually, as we speak, Google is looking for another key 'player' in its grand social and gaming plans: it's seeking its "Product Management Leader, Games" so feel free to apply if you think you've got what it takes. Note that you would be "will be responsible for developing Google's games commerce product strategy and partnering to build and manage the business with a cross-functional team."
Revenues And Partnerships
In terms of cashing in on the games, TechCrunch anticipated that PayPal, who currently registers Zynga as its single largest customer, would be replaced by Google Checkout "as primary payment option" on the new platform. The report further quotes sources as saying that Zynga will post first-half sales of $350 million, and "projecting at least $1.0 billion in revenue in 2011." Just to give you an idea, this compares to TechCrunch's projected $240 million and to PaidContent's expectations for "more than $355 million" for this year. PaidContent also anticipated the bulk of the revenues would come from Facebook as despite sustained split-up rumors, the two companies finally entered a five-year non-exclusive agreement. And it is, indeed, non-exclusive, as Zynga has since been inking deals with other sites that will undoubtedly contribute to boosting the company's revenues to unprecedented levels. The social games platform notably shook hands with Microsoft's MSN and Yahoo. Looking at the social gaming platform's track record on Facebook, one can expect those companies to also benefit from Zynga's popularity in more than one way as rich ads displays in virtual currencies get the best ROI (read: the most engaged viewers and longest dwell times), according to a TubeMogul study that placed Facebook as the first beneficiary of the Zynga effect in that respect - so far. Google will certainly be happy to milk it too.
Finally, Zynga's lastest deal was announced at the end of June: the iPhone and iPod touch now carry its Farmville game. A smart move as it is estimated that in the mobile virtual gaming spend will exceed $168M this year and is poised to explode. That's for the U.S. only, so imagine the global market...
Global, Games, Gzillions: Bullseye For Google
Zynga has that covered to and is a truly global player. In May, it acquired Chinese social gaming company XPD Media for an undisclosed sum. In June, it was reported to have secured a $147 mln investment from Softbank and Bloomberg cited sources close to the deal as saying that talks between the two companies focused on "distributing and jointly promoting games through Softbank's mobile-phone service in Japan and other countries."
Today, Business Insider values the company at $4 billion. Again, this compares to the estimated $1 billion figure given by Bloomberg only last year.
It looks like Google has picked just the right partner for its ambitious social and gaming plans.
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