Henning Lange blog

TDavid has a very intersting post about "accidense" meaning what happens when people accidentally click on Google Adsense ads due to white space arround the ad. He noticed that some AdSense ads have more white space than others fostering more non-intentional clicks. I noticed that accidense happens pretty often to me on skyscrapers and wallpapers when I try to scroll down on my notebook.

So, why the hell are accidense possible? Maybe, because it’s just to hard to make the white color space arround ads and links unclickable
I believe accidense happens becaue there are losers and winners like in real life: users lose time and focus, while advertisers lose money to publishers and/or syndicators as Google which are the real winners like insureances.    

So, why don’t advertisers do anything against accidense? Hmm, maybe first of all they don’t know about. Second, they lose control about ad delivery when they once set their clickprice in AdWords. Third, they need to control their performance from ad delivery to user’s last action which is still a very challenging task for even large marketers.   

Due to market pressure Google might give advertisers back more control as they just have started to do with the possibility to bid different prices on search and contextual placements as well as choosing certain pages. But still, accidense next to click-fraude will cause more non-intentional traffic and additional expenses on advertiser’s side.

Last Friday I got a call regarding to my post about pay-per-call from an entrepreneur setting up a new business. His question in mind was, if I’m setting up a similar business. As we don’t, we had a nice talk about lot’s of stuff like raising money for our new businesses.

On the one hand it shows that we have to communicate what Ormigo is about (so, we will after closing our first round of financing), and on the other hand it shows the true power of sharing your thoughts. After having setup my blog just two weeks ago I was really surprised to get instant feedback. Very cool. So, let’s keep on talking.

Thomas Hawk has a very interesting case study whichs shows why Flickr wins over WebShots. Alexa shows that Fickr for the first time has overtaken Webshots in traffic, although the former market leader Webshots started in 1995 while Flickr showed up for the first time in Q1/2004. So, why the hell it took Flickr less then 1 1/2 year to become the market leader?

As Eirik Solheim put’s it on his blog Fickr is a great example of a successful web 2.0 service with the following properties:

• An easy to use application with a clean interface
• Social functions: tagging, groups, comments, evaluations
• RSS feeds for everything
• An open API

It’s very inspiring to see how fast Flickr has grown through it’s open approach for sharing photos.   

Within the last two years I also screened the pay-per-call model and it’s provider as Ingenio or ZiffLeads to set-up an own business. As we don’t have any pay-per-call provider in Germany, I believed it would have been more or less easy to convince VCs to invest but I doubt german users would either use it or publisher would integrate it. Why?

1. Many advertisers told me users don’t use their free call-back functions on their website, they prefer writing a mail sitting in front of their computer instead of picking-up their phone. Additionally Germans aren’t used to call free numbers as Americans are with their 0800-numbers. VoIP might change this over time.

2. Publishers will integrate advertising solutions which drive more revenues to them and I still doubt that a pure pay-per-call model creates more transactions and revenues than Google AdSense which is the benchmark to beat to get adspace in Germany.      

But it will be very interesting to see when Google mixes both models up. So, the customer is free to choose between a click and a call. I would first click and then call the advertiser - so Google and it’s publishers would earn it twice…

What happens when you offer a great solution for free? You run out of capacity. That’s what even happend to Google with it’s 150 k+ computers.

Today, I received the following mail from Google:

"First, due to extremely high demand, we’ve temporarily limited the number of new signups as we increase capacity. This allows us to focus on our primary objective–to provide a great user experience for our existing users.

Next, here is current information on the most common questions we’re receiving:

1. The ‘Check Status’ button is being reworked to check for properly installed tracking code. This should be fixed by the end of November.
2. The ‘+Add Profile’ link has been temporarily removed until we increase capacity. We’ll alert all current users when the feature is restored.
3. While we increase capacity, you may see longer than normal delays in data showing up in your reports. All data continues to be collected and no data has been lost."

Seems to be that Google learnt it’s lesson what service means.

It seems to be that Google completes it’s ABC: analytics, base and now click-to-call followed by desktop, earth, froogle…

As SearchEngineWatch posts Google begins to test a click-to-call advertising program. Of course, the call itself is free to it’s users and advertisers, which will still pay for user’s connection. But one interesting questions remains: Will Google charge per click or per call? If they charge per call they are not far away from offering pay-per-lead and/or pay-per-order mixing up their successful pay-per-click model.

Greg Yardley has first screenshots of Google’s click-to-call ads as well as a link to Google’s FAQ for their click-to-call product.

24/7 Real Media released its Top 10 online advertising and interactive marketing predictions for 2006. Here, the top five predictions:

1. Consumer-generated media will become increasingly attractive to advertisers. (good news for the blogosphere)
2. Advertisers will continue shifting traditional adspend to the web due to an increase in internet use and better targeting/reporting capabilities. (it’s time to do so!)
3. Advertisers, cable providers and interactive marketing experts will collaborate to address ad skipping "The TiVo Effect". (good luck)
4. Brand advertisers will drive the next wave of growth for the paid search market. (the story must go on)
5. Performance-based pricing models will demonstrate the true value of search engine marketing as a lead-generation channel (I bet on)

This morning I checked my Google Analytics account and yes, it work’s. It’s  4 years ago that I have checked some webstats working at IhrPreis.de - the European Priceline.com - with Webtrends. Quite impressive how easy it is now to analyse your webstats, and it’s all free. 

Hey, I just launched my first blog and already got a free statistic service - Google Analytics. I doubt I’ll ever reach the free 5 Million pageviews per month, but let’s give them a try

Wow, if Google can do that what else can they do? and who will be suffering under their power? What does this mean for the entire industry? Are bandwith, statistic and tracking solutions nothing worth anymore? Will there be only ad dollars and e-commerce in the future?    

The most relevent information on Google Analytics you will find on Oliver’s Blog. More details on Search Engine Roundtable’s article "Google Analystice (ex-Urchin) Delivers Web Analytics for FREE".

On the road reading "The search" from John Battelle. Great insights on the nature and development of search which always starts with an human intention. Google’s story is still very inspiring - especially in the phase of setting up a new business. A must read for the Web 2.0 community!

Oliver, thanks for taking the picture and sending it to John. John, thanks for posting it