Forum Moderators: martinibuster
I smell they overweighted their alogthoms and overlooked the subsequent impact,
The impact on whom?
Everyone involved in the advertise/ publishing business, including Google itself.
As for the impact on publishers, that depends on the publisher, but I don't think publishers overall are hurting (since payments to revenue partners have increased substantially, too).
Business tends to put much more focus on quality, robustness and repeatability, because of the risks involved (a small computer error could bankrupt a business). They typically invest large parts of the development life cycle on things like investigating requirements and testing (eg: 20% or 30% of total effort can go on testing alone).
Academia tends to focus more on the development effort, sometimes only wanting a program to run once. One-off computer errors tend to have little impact (the typically worst scenario is that an experiment is flawed, which can seem very serious to the individual but is in a different league to organisations going out of business). Also, one-off errors in scientific studies are often much quicker and easier to identify by looking at the output data rather than rigorously testing the computer process itself.
I don't know whether these cultural differences are manifest between Yahoo and Google. What I've seen from the outside suggests Google has elements of both but tends more towards the academic style of development approach. The emphasis is on development, with a high degree of trust in the algorithms and low levels of testing. A traditionally commercial IT development culture would likely have less-rapid rollout of new ideas, with more advance-communication of changes, implementation schedules (even if they are not met, they would at least be known) and more structured feedback mechanisms to assess the impact on stakeholders.
Which style will be most successful? Google's record to date suggests that, despite its' drawbacks, the academic style of approach can get them ahead and keep them ahead. If Yahoo take a commercial approach the danger is they never get to catch Google up, because by the time they reach where Google are today, Google have moved even further on.
On the other hand, contextual advertising differs from SERPs because there is much more real money at stake. Yahoo could compete by developing a simpler system that works really, really well, perhaps providing a lesser but more stable income/service for advertisers and publishers alike. That could be a very attractive proposition.
Fortunately, we publishers won't need to worry about this. When YPN goes international, we'll all be able to make choices between the two, according to which works best for us or on each site/page.
Yahoo could compete by developing a simpler system that works really, really well, perhaps providing a lesser but more stable income/service for advertisers and publishers alike.
We already had a simple system: AdSense 1.0, where the price per click was the same across the board. It became more complex (with smart pricing, site-targeted CPM ads, etc.) because it didn't meet the needs of advertisers.
The only way Yahoo could compete with a simpler system would be to have a network of limited size and scope (e.g., a premium network of sites that have been vetted manually for quality and anticipated or measured conversion rates). That approach might work very well for a small niche player, but it's hard to imagine Yahoo being willing to have such modest goals.
We already had a simple system: AdSense 1.0, where the price per click was the same across the board. It became more complex ... because it didn't meet the needs of advertisers. The only way Yahoo could compete with a simpler system would be to have a network of limited size and scope...
I think you're putting too much faith in Google. To make this statement is to say that Google created the perfect simple system, but it didn't work, and nobody could ever do it better than they did.
Perhaps Google just failed to provide the appropriate simple system? I'm not sure that Yahoo is going to do it better. But to say that nobody could because Google couldn't just doesn't make sense.
"Bees shouldn't be able to fly" either, remember? Until somebody finally figured out how they do it.
I think you're putting too much faith in Google. To make this statement is to say that Google created the perfect simple system, but it didn't work, and nobody could ever do it better than they did.
No, I'm saying that there are limits to simplicity in a complex marketplace.
No, I'm saying that there are limits to simplicity in a complex marketplace.
I think that's just a bit too close minded considering PPC and contextual advertising are such new forms of marketing. There are so few real players in the game. It's too early to state that all avenues of simplicity have been explored.
If in 10 years we still don't see a simple system, if everyone has gone down the Smart Pricing / Site Targetting / CPM road and all who have tried other avenues have failed, then I'll be ready to say "maybe that's the best way for now."
It's too early to state that all avenues of simplicity have been explored.
Nobody's suggesting that all avenues of simplicity have been explored. But broad-spectrum companies like Google and Yahoo can't behave like small niche players (e.g., by having a one-bid-fits-all-sites pricing model).
