Woo-hoo! April 1st falls on a Saturday this year. This means we can minimize the impact of all those onanistic corporate April Fools web gags. Like I said last year, those lame gags are about as hip as a CEO going to Burning Man.

Here's Philipp, however, previewing the leaked Google gag for this year.

¶ 3/31/2006

Dear John,

We're excited to recognize your participation and feedback that have helped us shape the pilot of MSN� adCenter. To thank you for using adCenter to promote your business, we'd like to offer you an exclusive opportunity to refer friends and colleagues to apply for the pilot.

Obviously, they're not big followers of this blog, since I trashed adCenter in a post cryptically entitled: Microsoft is so lame. I've tried it a few times since, and I still think it, well, sucks.

If the adCenter team really was "excited to recognize your participation and feedback", they'd refund my $5 registration fee.

So I wouldn't recommend it to anybody except those crafty early adopters willing to put up with an IE-only interface that regularly breaks. If you can do that, you might be able to find some cheap traffic.

Make sure you track your ROI, though.

PS: I know from first-hand experience that it's painful to worry about capitalization in a product name. People never get it right. Let's count how many times we see "adCenter" capitalized differently than Microsoft intends.

PPS: I have no idea why there's a question mark in their email after "MSN". Perhaps the self-confidence level is at an all time low with all the VP reshuffling?

¶ 3/29/2006

Here's a Forbes column just shredding them in a way usually reserved for a slashdot posting.

The new version of Microsoft Windows, called Vista, has slipped again. It was originally going to ship in 2003. Then 2005. Then 2006. Now in early 2007.

...

Worst of all, I can't believe Microsoft actually held this big nonevent "event" only a few days before announcing another screw-up in Vista. If Ballmer knew he was about to announce a delay and still had this event, he's crazy. If he didn't know Vista was about to slip again, then Microsoft is in worse shape than anyone realizes.

...

Why not at least switch to an Apple Computer Mac? Apple's new operating system is stable, reliable and easy to use. The applications are simple, gorgeous and work well together. And they're here. Today. Steve Jobs must be waking up a happy man this morning.

I am really starting to look at a Mac for my next desktop, coincidentally enough.

¶ 3/27/2006

Microsoft's desperate shuffling of VPs in the wake of the increasing Vista slippage is discussed in depressing depth at MiniMsft. If I were Google, I would do a graduate seminar for executives based on that blog, because it's the ghost of Christmas future that they want to avoid: fiefdoms, sloth, bickering, bureaucracy and low morale.

It reminds me of a handy job survival rule:
When you spend more than 50% of your time complaining or listening to others complain about your place of work, it's time to leave.

¶ 3/26/2006

If you want to put video somewhere, it's easy and free to upload. And it's incredibly easy to watch. There's a "put on site" button that gives you the flash player embed tag to use.

You can safely ignore the prognostications of those who said it sucked the day it was launched.

¶ 3/20/2006

Now looking at the features, what's the difference? Mainly easy signup, basic reporting and "Create and run a single ad with many keywords" and Google chooses the CPC for you. In other words, strip away the complexity and just get an ad up.

Now I only read through the docs, but I found this interesting concept: AdWords Health Meter. It's pretty much the same status as regular AdWords but it's explained in a warm & fuzzy way.

Of course, just like "marijuana leads to heroin", AdWords Starter is clearly designed to get you into AdWords Standard. And once you upgrade, you can't go back.

The key takeaway is that someone over there cares about the great unreached masses of PPC newbies.

¶ 3/17/2006

I've read Om Malik and a bunch of other places talking about Windows Live, and how Microsoft is going to challenge Yahoo and Google for real. I don't get it.

What does this picture say to you?

It shouts "Confused Bureaucratic Legacy Mashup" to me. (And to a lesser extent: "Get a better fitting shirt for the rich dude in the corner.")

It also reminds me that every 5 years Microsoft picks a short word and gloms it on to all their branding. And confuses the hell outta everyone. Last time is was ".Net". Now, apparently it's "Live".

¶ 3/17/2006

So far, this year's version is not chock-full of excitement. But do you wonder if CFO George Reyes had not mused this boilerplate out loud before the analyst meeting would this buried section in the annual report have had the same impact? Or maybe you don't wonder that...

We expect that our revenue growth rate will decline over time and anticipate that there will be downward pressure on our operating margin. We believe our revenue growth rate will generally decline as a result of increasing competition and the inevitable decline in growth rates as our revenues increase to higher levels.

Never mind the fact that their margin is actually increasing. It is hard to keep up 100+% growth rates, though.

The minor highlights include:

• US is 62% of Google's revenue, but less than 50% of the traffic.
• Google site traffic is growing faster than non-Google site traffic. Which is good from a margin perspective. Very good.

I.e. Traffic acquisition costs as a percentage of advertising revenues are decreasing for Google. Some might say that Google is tweaking their traffic mix. To which I say: Then how come Google is grabbing more and more total traffic every day - on both Google and non-Google sites?

It's a simple land grab: they are getting traffic any way they can. And they are going after a growing pool and winning the most share. That's good execution on their part.

If the stock wasn't so hot, that fact would be pretty interesting to all the nay-sayers.

This is kinda fun as well: Five of our Google Network members account for approximately 88% of the total future guaranteed minimum revenue share payments and 10 of our Google Network members account for 95% of these payments.

88% percent of something like $200M in the last year goes to 4 partners. That's getting more concentrated (up from 70% from 5 partners in 2004). Obviously, Google has stopped doing much guaranteed rev stuff, as that payout number is in decline as well.

That means there are 4 big partners with rev-share guarantees. You know AOL is the biggest making up 9% of Google's total revenues, but who are the others? Earthlink? Amazon? AT&T Worldnet? I'm not sure - and Google's pretty quiet about it.

¶ 3/17/2006

Here's some extremely anecdotal information that MySpace is done. Over. Fad. Done.

(I'm just posting this sign of the apocalypse as early as possible so I can pre-jump the inevitable pronouncements that something has been jumped.)

Why did they quit MySpace? Miss School Spirit wasn't specific, but I think she was tired of the experience. And, since she is a song girl at school, there was probably also the creep factor that is beginning to characterize the site. As for Mr. Pop Culture, I've let him explain why, in his own words, below.

...

TAD'S TAB: Why did I quit MySpace? Because it is a parasite feeding off the egos and self-esteem of millions of teenage girls and boys. It's also an addiction: I find myself unconsciously typing in its URL every time I turn on Firefox. That's why yesterday I decided to escape from its clutches. Impulsively, I deleted my account.

¶ 3/16/2006

Anyway, he credits Google with saving his sanity in this post, and that's all the excuse I need to point to his incredible story in getting treatment for a rare vocal disorder.

¶ 3/11/2006

For those who don't follow the comparison shopping space, Brian Smith's Comparison Engines is a great blog to start with. He points to this online chat/inteview of ShopZilla founder Farhad Mohit.

It's good stuff for entrepreneurs, but the snarky side of me likes how Farhad gets in a thinly veiled shot at eBay and Shopping.com when he talks about being acquired by Scripps.

initially we thought they'd be the stalking horse... and a big-name internet company who was pursuing us was the natural acquirer... But, as we got into it... Scripps really knew very little about the space and therefore was truly "betting" on us... while the other company thought they knew exactly how to run out silly little division and that we'd just better take the money and shut the hell up...

that wasn't a very useful tack to pursue with us and so we let 'em destroy our competition... :) (by buying them)

¶ 3/09/2006

My post on Google Analyst day mentioned how I thought that Jonathan Rosenberg was intimating big changes to come in AdSense, including behavioral targeting. The great thing about Google is that you usually only have to wait 4 days until things become clearer.

Search Engine Watch breaks the news that AdWords will sell demographic based targeting. Jennifer Slegg wrote that article and goes into further detail on her blog: putting it in proper perspective for AdSense. Jennifer also has the "missing slides" from analyst day and she does a good job of breaking down the key bullet points from the slides:

But strong competitors are attempting to aggregate traffic

• AdSense margins will be squeezed in 2006 and beyond
• Y! and MSN will do un-economic things to grow share
• The ad network will be commoditized over time

You can see that Google is looking over its shoulder (even though right now Yahoo and MSN especially have serious disadvantages.)

Jen says:

With the other types of media, we have seen the rich media beta test as well as Google's expansion into print ads, radio ads and click-to-call. They slide also mentions television advertising as well as direct mail.

Google also mentions: "Advanced Tools & Reporting for sophisticated advertisers (e.g., API, bid management, ad scheduling)" and better integration with other Google products such as Analytics.

From the announcements and the leaked slides, I think you can see two big trends:

1. Google's getting serious about the AdSense competition
2. The 'Cringley theory' of Google applying their open-market model to ALL kinds of media is real.

¶ 3/09/2006

HBO has a Google Maps Web2.0 real-estate Mashup going on for the Sopranos. And they're advertising it in AdWords. You might see the ad over on the right. (Not that I'd encourage you to click it.)

Unfortunately, the implementation - in Flash, of course, is broken for me. Probably too many users or something. Still, you can go there and get the gist of it even if it's not working.

Update: MSFT must have gotten to them. It only works in IE. Ugh.

When a TV series does a mashup does that qualify as jumping the you-know-what?

¶ 3/08/2006

BTW, Google T-shirts tend to be kinda "muscle-T" tight, as if they were designed for people who are svelte and young.

¶ 3/06/2006

It's free signup day at MSN AdCenter, but you better fire up that ol IE browser you keep around for CSS compatibility testing, because they don't take Firefox:

MSN adCenter does not currently support the web browser you are using. Please sign in using Internet Explorer 6. More about system requirements

Earth to MSFT, Earth to MSFT: You are not the market leader here, you are not the monopoly. You have to try harder...

PS, MSFT: Correct punctuation is appreciated even in user-unfriendly error messages. A period please after "system requirements".

UPDATE: Well, it sucks once you register as well. I'm trying to add keywords to my Campaign, and it's not working because it's getting JavaScript error messages. Help is broken in places too. If any one from MSN reads this, here's ONE of the JS errors: Home.aspx, Line 686: Error while parsing: "https://adcenter.msn.com/XSLSheets/EditableGrid_Rows.xsl". No data is available for the requested resource.

I think I want my $5 back.

¶ 3/06/2006

While our brand strength is not quantifiable, I believe it also grew significantly. When Berkshire acquired control of GEICO in 1996, its annual advertising expenditures were $31 million. Last year we were up to $502 million. And I can’t wait to spend more.

Our advertising works because we have a great story to tell: More people can save money by insuring with us than is the case with any other national carrier offering policies to all comers.

He has a good story and he can't wait to spend on ads to tell it. That's because his ads work, and he knows it - e.g. number of policies issued was up 26% in 2005.

BTW, Ad spend going from $31M to $502M in 9 years is a nice growth rate (CAGR) of 36%! Nice job by their agency - the Martin agency in Richmond, VA.

¶ 3/04/2006

A 4 HOUR Webcast of Google's analyst day is up. CNet mercifully excerpts the highlights for the less devoted google-holics. Hey, even I could only stand to listen to the audio version...

So what do we find? A TON O' STUFF. Highlights with my blather in italics:

Predictable:

• Click fraud "is not a material issue in the company," Schmidt says.
• Worldwide focus. Hiring everywhere to build global engineering. Eustace: Google has a challenge in engineering to distribute the site worldwide. "This is not an outsourcing effort."
• Google not experiencing increased pressure on traffic acquisition costs. Those costs overall have been declining.
• Eustace: Google has built one of the largest computational infrastructures in the world. "The reason that's important is because we are incredibly cheap." Competitors can not deploy infrastructure faster, cheaper or at scale.

  Forget what you read about 100k servers. My fearless prediction: Google has over 1 Million CPUs in its infrastructure TODAY. The skynet datacenter in a shipping container model is real.

  AMD stock was up today on the idea that Google would start using AMD CPUs. That's how many CPUs they buy...

Intriguing:

• Rosenberg: "More can be done with even better personalization" AND LATER: "There's an enormous opportunity in click-through rate improvements."

  Imagine Google AdSense with behavioral data. Relevant ad breakthrough for sites where content is thin, but user profile data is thick. Imagine Google taking on Yahoo in impression based stuff.

  Imagine all the people
  Sharing all the world...
  
  You may say Im a dreamer,
  but Im not the only one,
  

  Oops, sorry, got caught up in the 'imagine' theme...

• The company will focus more resources on the hottest properties. "We understand the impact that 10 million, a hundred million users can have," Schmidt says.

  HOT PROPERTIES implies MySpace? There was a lot of talk about Orkut in this conf call, oddly. Or maybe I've just been reading too much Yardley lately?

• Schmidt pees on Microsoft's parade: Google is primarily focused on Microsoft as a competitor because of the software giant's history as a company, but Google hasn't seen an impact from Microsoft's search products yet.
• Schmidt shows a chart of the $283 billion market for advertising, including broadcast, radio, Internet, print, cable TV and direct mail. Says Google will be in all of those markets over time.

  More evidence for the Cringely theory. Google wants to deliver targeted "Minorty Report" experience advertising over anything connected to TCP/IP. Which will be everything in 3 years.

Funny:

• Marissa also gets in MSFT's Grill: Mayer: The fact that AOL chose to go with Google rather than Microsoft (as a search partner) indicates AOL thinks Google is better.

  She prefaced this with: "Google tries not to get too focused on external competition". Right Marissa. Eric just told us that Microsoft was the primary focus. Methinks the lady doth protest too much.

• Kaifu Lee's speeches to university students in China have been extrememly popular. There's even been some scalping of tickets.

  I'm picturing Lee on the stage opening the show: "Are you ready to ROCK, Guangdong-province!?!

• CFO Reyes: "The biggest issue in the fourth quarter was all around the tax rate. That's an important item and Google is focused on it, but that's not an operating item. It was a very solid quarter."

  Translation: It was a good quarter, but we've lost $40B in market cap since then due primarily to my inability to predict the tax rate and keep my mouth shut.

• Clapping as Reyes was introduced.

  I wonder who the audience was - short sellers?

Overall, great stuff. I'm sticking with my Google more dominant in 2006 prediction. Of course I also said the stock would go to $600 by the end of the year. Maybe that's why I'm so harsh on Reyes - he's screwing up my Nostramdus prize eligibility.

¶ 3/02/2006

Even though I spend a lot of time writing various mashups, I somehow missed this Mashup camp conference not more than 10 minutes from my desk.

Of course, there's a wiki, and I can read the notes. Amusing note from one of the sessions:

"How did God create the earth in seven days? He didn't have any legacy data."

It's funny because it's true. Joe Duck gets all excited about the possibilities as well.

¶ 3/01/2006