Google and the FDA

As you may be aware, the FDA issued warning letters to a number of pharmaceutical companies earlier this year regarding their use of search engine advertising to market prescription drugs. The FDA’s finding was that these text ads (35 characters headline and 70 characters over two lines of body copy) did not adhere to the standards of warnings and risks fair balance that they require in other advertising media (TV, print, etc.).

This past week, the FDA conducted hearings on how they might best regulate internet marketing (including advertising and social media) and took testimony from of number of vested interests including Google.

Google posted its presentation and here are a few observations I thought might be of interest:

• Google makes a good case regarding the growing use of search and online research for health-related information – 4.6B searches; 3x growth in 3 years – and actions taken as a result. The point is that people are going to the internet and the FDA needs to take this bigger picture look at how consumers receive and process medical information and modify its policies regarding advertising and other forms of internet marketing to provide the best possible access to health information.
  
• Google uses sharp declines in click-through rates as an indication that text ads since the FDA warning are “less transparent and relevant.” This is undoubtedly true. I have to point out though that these declines in CTR’s also mean significant drops in pay-per-click revenues so don’t think Google is solely altruisticly motivated.
  
• Google’s recommendation is to have fixed warning/risk information included in the text ad with 62 characters available for modification. The examples they provide are for searches on the product brand name. But what if the search is “generic” instead like on “seasonal allergies?” Also, this would seem to provide pharmaceutical companies with a significantly greater advertising footprint (and likely competitive advantage) over other advertisers, for example, lifestyle websites promoting similar topics.

Clearly, the hearings were just the start of the discussion and there will likely be changes/modifications before anything is finalized some time in the future.

And this leads me to a final and bigger question: how can government agencies like the FDA keep up with the fast-evolving sphere of the internet and provide time-appropriate oversight?

LinkedIn Tests New Design

LinkedIn, the leading social network for business professionals, recently announced that it is testing a new design that will make its interface less cluttered and easier to navigate.

According to the LinkedIn blog, new features include:

1. A global navigation bar at the top of the page that provides convenient access to all LinkedIn services.
2. Simplified local navigation within each of the LinkedIn areas (Profile, Contacts, Groups, etc.).
3. More room available for page content. Less scrolling.
4. A cleaner, less-cluttered look.

Here is a screenshot of the redesigned LinkedIn homepage:

Here is a screenshot of a redesigned LinkedIn profile page:


You’ll notice that the navigation menu at the top of the screen is more prominent and the navigation bar that appeared on the left-hand side of the screen is now gone. This leaves more room on the screen for information about your contacts. By getting rid of the clutter, LinkedIn becomes much more user-friendly. This should entice more people to use LinkedIn for professional networking and may also encourage individual users to spend more time using the site on a regular basis.

Don’t worry if you haven’t noticed a difference in your own LinkedIn account yet. This design is currently available to a select group of users, but may be rolled out to a wider audience in the coming weeks. If you’d like to see a visual comparison of the old and new designs, visit Mashable.com to see side-by-side screenshots of the two interfaces.

Welcome Back, Blogger – An Untweetable Story

Dear DBE Blog –

It’s been a while since last we connected. To be honest, I found someone else who made it easier and faster to tweet - I mean share - information. But now I’m back (see I didn’t forget your password) because something important has come up that requires more than can be handled in 140 characters.

Citibank and Gfk Roper recently released results from a survey of 500 small business executives under a headline that I find to be a misleading conclusion. Furthermore, buried in the story is information that I think is far more relevant and valuable for readers. Let’s start with that:

“The survey found that general search engine sites such as Google and Yahoo! trump small business-focused sites and the WSJ.com as destinations for small business owners to seek business advice or information. 61% of respondents say they rely on these search engine sites…

…42% of small business owners and managers reported that in the past year they have made greater use of their company's website to generate business leads and sales. Among companies with 20-99 employees the percentage rises with 57% saying they have made greater use of their website.”

The misleading headline is that small businesses are “not joining the social media conversation” citing that 76% have not found social media outlets to be useful for generating business leads/growth.

Excuse me, but isn’t it more significant that 24% of small businesses are finding social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter to be helping their business?! Doesn’t that positive interpretation of the data seem more in line with the other data showing small businesses are relying more and more on the internet?

Of course, my conclusion is that smart companies are finding competitive advantage through integrated use of findability tactics including search engine optimization, paid search and, yes, social media marketing.

Feel free to draw your own conclusions. Click http://ow.ly/udtN for the press release.

P.S. to Blogger: Thanks for posting all 2,019 characters at one time and hope you understand that I couldn’t resist using the url shortener. As a reward, I’m going to treat you to more readers by tweeting about you…

Slimming Down with Facebook Lite

The public preview of Facebook Lite launched yesterday. If you have a Facebook account, you can log in and try it out at http://lite.facebook.com/.

For those of you who may not have heard of Facebook Lite yet, it is not meant as a full replacement for the standard Facebook interface. Available internationally, it is a back-to-basics version of the social network which is intended to aid mobile users and those with slow Internet connections.

Here are the major differences between the two versions of Facebook, as explained by PCWorld:

The profile page on Facebook Lite removes many of the bells and whistles from the traditional version and keeps only the basics: your wall, info, friends, and photos and videos. The status and sharing interface is unchanged; however, you can't view wall-to-wall posts or invite friends to an event.

The most notable omissions from the new Facebook Lite interface are the third-party applications. Only a handful of Facebook's own applications are available, so that you can get a reasonable experience from the site. Other changes include birthdays and contacts moved at the top of the feed and real-time updates at the bottom of the page.

Also of note, Facebook has introduced a new "@"-based tagging system for status updates. If you use Twitter, this may sound very familiar. Facebook will be rolling out this change over the next few weeks, so you may not be able to access it yet. To learn more, check out this post in the Facebook blog: http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=109765592130.

These moves are widely viewed as part of Facebook’s effort to beat Twitter at its own game. The announcements come on the heels of Facebook’s acquisition of FriendFeed, the introduction of real-time updates, the addition of privacy settings which allow you to open your profile to the public, and several other Twitter-esque changes. Whether this will be enough to slow Twitter’s growth remains to be seen, but it’s clear that Facebook isn’t content to rest on its laurels while the “next big thing” steals its thunder.

Microsoft and Yahoo! Announce Deal

Earlier this morning, Microsoft and Yahoo! announced that they’ve struck a deal, essentially merging their search properties. They tout that the agreement will provide the scale necessary to fuel innovation and development to compete with “one company that dominates more than 70 percent of all search” (read: Google).

Here are the specific details of the deal. For more information, read the entire “Microsoft, Yahoo! Change Search Landscape” press release.

• The term of the agreement is 10 years;
• Microsoft will acquire an exclusive 10 year license to Yahoo!'s core search technologies, and Microsoft will have the ability to integrate Yahoo! search technologies into its existing web search platforms;
• Microsoft's Bing will be the exclusive algorithmic search and paid search platform for Yahoo! sites. Yahoo! will continue to use its technology and data in other areas of its business such as enhancing display advertising technology.
• Yahoo! will become the exclusive worldwide relationship sales force for both companies' premium search advertisers. Self-serve advertising for both companies will be fulfilled by Microsoft's AdCenter platform, and prices for all search ads will continue to be set by AdCenter's automated auction process.
• Each company will maintain its own separate display advertising business and sales force.
• Yahoo! will innovate and "own" the user experience on Yahoo! properties, including the user experience for search, even though it will be powered by Microsoft technology.
• Microsoft will compensate Yahoo! through a revenue sharing agreement on traffic generated on Yahoo!'s network of both owned and operated (O&O) and affiliate sites.
• Microsoft will pay traffic acquisition costs (TAC) to Yahoo! at an initial rate of 88% of search revenue generated on Yahoo!'s O&O sites during the first 5 years of the agreement.
• Yahoo! will continue to syndicate its existing search affiliate partnerships.
• Microsoft will guarantee Yahoo!'s O&O revenue per search (RPS) in each country for the first 18 months following initial implementation in that country.
  

It’s certainly too early to know exactly how this will shake out, and we’re still more than 2 years out from full implementation (they’re hoping for regulatory review and approval in early 2010, with completion of the integration 24 months after that). However, here are some of the initial thoughts from DBE team members:

Deepa Maran: The integration will begin in the United States with organic search and then with paid search ads. The integration will then expand to other countries and regions.

The search brand at Yahoo! will remain "Yahoo! Search" but it will have a label at the bottom of the page that says "Powered by Bing." (Yahoo will use Bing's search algorithm). Nothing is changing now, not until they get regulatory approval, so we have time.

Re: SEA (search engine advertising, aka PPC), we won't have to worry about managing both adCenter campaigns and Yahoo campaigns, just adCenter.

Marc Engelsman: For searchers, the algorithm merger is most likely a good thing as it will provide a strong competitive alternative to Google. There will be continued investments in improvements to make search results more and more relevant and meaningful to users by both Google and Yahoo!/Bing. I also think that this may increase the likelihood of users conducting the same search on both Google and Yahoo!/Bing, particularly if Google’s initial results are not satisfactory.

From an SEO perspective, we have always liked MSN’s algorithm as it puts more weight on onsite tags/content (vs. Google’s inbound links emphasis) and ergo is faster to index our clients’ optimized pages. And, for paid search, using the same ad interface should provide economies in terms of ad set-up and bid management. It will be interesting to see if this also may lead to slowing/reversing the seemingly endless rise in cost-per-clicks.

Rob Trautner: In response to Marc’s CPC comment above, I think it will have the opposite effect on CPC. The consolidation means you’ve reduced the inventory of ad space, making the remaining territory more valuable. Also, if this works and Binghoo increases their market share, there will be more competition for that limited space.

From the PPC management perspective, I have issues with both Yahoo’s Panama and Microsoft’s AdCenter. They both have built-in bottlenecks that create headaches. The advantage of AdCenter winning out is that they already have a Desktop editor, and that makes most aspects of set-up substantially easier. The online management interface though, is slow, clunky and unintuitive. That doesn’t even begin to address how fluky AdCenter is when it comes to actually displaying ads, especially since the switch to Bing. This is one area that they will really need to fix to ensure that this is successful. If Yahoo ad impressions drop to Bing levels, then running SEA on their network will be practically useless.

At first, I thought I would be working on “next steps” today, but the next step is “Wait. Then wait some more.” Implementation time is going to be an obstacle. First they have to get through regulatory hearings, which predictions indicate will be in 2010, then it will take up to 24 months to execute. That’s almost 3 years! Just think about what was happening on the internet 3 years ago then imagine how different the playing field will be 3 years from today. Google Wave will be running full speed (in its 2nd full year of beta.) We’ll have 6th generation iPhones, 4th generation “iPhone killers,” and mobile internet will be standard on pretty much every phone. That doesn’t even factor in the devices we haven’t seen yet.

Microsoft and Yahoo have their work cut out for them. Separately, they’ve both been trounced by Google. Combined, they’re still trounced by Google. If the best they can do is pool their resources to try to catch up, this will fail. They need to leapfrog Google technologically to truly compete, and at the pace that Google is developing and innovating, that’s going to be very difficult.

Ann Pyle: Even with their joined forces, Microsoft and Yahoo!’s market share is still less than half of Google’s 65%. It will be interesting to see if they can overcome that gap through their combined resources, expertise and technologies, but time is the enemy (see Rob’s comment above). The pressure is on, because if they don’t get it right, they run the risk of sending their audience to the only other option out there – Google.

From a management perspective, this deal will make monitoring and reporting easier, with only 2 major search engines to keep track of. Though this does mean re-benchmarking in terms of visibility numbers.

Rob says “Binghoo”, I say “Bingya”. Which will become the overused, annoying amalgam media latches onto first?