The new head of the antitrust unit in the US Department of Justice, Christine Varney, will be considering Google as one of the major threats to a competitive market in the US.

I don’t think anyone can disagree with her that Google has what appears to be a massive monopoly in the online advertising universe.

Last year in a panel discussion she made a statement that Microsoft was ’so last century’  when it comes to the problem of monopolies (I wonder if that would make them happy or sad), and then identified Google as a potential problem because of it’s monopoly on internet advertising.

Varney is not saying that any of Google’s monopoly has been unlawfully attained previous to now, but it seems that Google should expect more scrutiny from this administration than it might previously have had.  New acquisitions or takeovers will likely be up to intense examination, and Google’s aggressive expansion of advertising avenues since late last year might be given further consideration.

Comscore recently released their analysis of the US search market for December 08.  Google led with 63.0% of the searches conducted, followed by Yahoo! with 21%, Microsoft with 8.5% and AOL 3.9%.

Google’s considerate market share, which is likely lower than their share in other national markets, is unlikely to garner them with much support from Ms Varney.

I have to use web analytics packages every day in my work, whether it is Google Analytics or one of the paid providers, and it still surprises me when I log into a new clients account and discover that in Search Engine Traffic, there is no Paid traffic recorded.

Meanwhile, they are paying money to do PPC, they just haven’t connected it to their Analytics packages.

In the simplest case, if you are using Google Analytics and Google Adwords, connecting the two is a matter of only a few clicks. It is great because you then have all your Adwords ads tagged in your Google Analytics so that you can easily compare it to all the other sources of your traffic.

Also, by connecting the two, you have access to your analytics in your Adwords account, as a convenient tab, and you can view your analytics at any time.

It takes less than one minute. But still, many large online businesses are not linking their Adwords to their Google Analytics.

In other analytics tools it takes slightly longer to tag your PPC campaigns to be recorded in your analytics package, but it isn’t an onerous undertaking.  I had one Client tell me that they were paying their PPC provider to do their analytics in the Yahoo Analytics tool Index Tools, but the provider had not tagged up ANY PPC campaigns that they were undertaking (I wish I could get paid to do nothing like that).

This makes it difficult for the client to assess the relative ROI of their different traffic sources, it makes it difficult for the SEO provider to measure the impact of their own SEO work, and it makes it impossible for the client to see an objective measurement of their PPC performance.

I am not sure why some PPC providers do this, but perhaps it is to do with hiding costs, volumes, or the difference between clicks and visits. It is a deceptive and lazy practice, which I hope is eradicated by clients demanding full disclosure in the future.

If you have a PPC provider, you must demand that they tag up all campaigns they undertake. If they refuse, you should wonder why. If they say they can’t do it for some technical reason or another – ask them to talk to your SEO provider, or Web Analytics consultant for advice.  I am sure that it will then get done.

It is widely said that ‘no publicity is bad publicity’. But is the same true of ads? If you get your company name on a billboard on the Harbour Bridge, is it good exposure regardless of the content?

The annoyingness of ads comes to me every morning recently, as I read the Sydney Morning Herald online. Now, I am not sure how long the SMH has been doing this, but over the last week or so, sometimes when I click on a story, a little movie pops up. It used to be that you would have to click on the little play triangle to make any video ad start, but now they are automatically starting, and it is annoying if your volume is up, if you can’t find which tab it is on, just annoying in general that the ad is intruding on your relaxing morning read.

So, is this video negative advertising for the company? Well, luckily for them (?), I have never watched the entire ad, I switch it off as fast as possible and their name isn’t mentioned in those first few seconds.

So, do they pay for that video to get started? Do they have analytics in place to be able to measure who stays long enough to view the whole ad? SMH or the ad sellers might report to the company that their ad was viewed 2,000 times in an hour, but how many people would actually watch the whole thing, or even enough to find out what the ad was about?

This experience now would make me cautious about placing a video ad which doesn’t have the customers opt in of that little triangle play button – but of course this is my own personal opinion.

Other ads annoy me too.  I always respected NRMA as a staid old Australian company…until the UnWorry Ads. I have taken violently against them, I think they are stupid, irritating – and while that might be the point of the ads, because people certainly remember them and discuss them – I really think that in my mind their brand has taken a bit of a battering because of the ads. They seem less professional than I once thought. Of course, that might be because they are focussing on a completely different market to me. Maybe the younger market (sigh).

So, after a couple of paragraphs of ranting, what does this have to do with search marketing? Ad Copy of course. Those 35 words you get in AdWords, or the slightly longer snippet you get in the natural rankings. Do you make them demanding, attention-seeking, action-oriented ‘pick me’ buttons? Or do you go for the classy, explaining, restrained message, that retains some dignity?

It is a difficult choice to make, because around your brand, other ads are no doubt clamouring for attention, how could your restrained ad be seen among it? You need a strong message, even if you do want to set yourself apart from the spammy ads.

The answer for all this is a lot easier than for the NRMA billboards – luckily.  Because with internet marketing you have almost real time results – you can see exactly what people think of your ads, and you can test them.

You can put your unworry message in an ad for a couple of days and see how it goes. Compare it with other ads. How many impressions did it get – Google AdWords tends to show better performing ads more often. What click through rate did each get? What about conversion rate, because this will tell you whether you are attracting really valuable customers? Also, use your analytics package to see what the bounce rate was for the ads – this will tell you if the ad message was inappropriate for your website.

AdWords is so flexible that you can quickly and easily change the copy in your ad so that you can actually be a bit experimental and risky. When ads go wrong in Google Adwords, you can easily switch them off before they do too much damage, so you may as well test lots with different kinds of copy. Let your imagination run wild and you might be surprised at what works best.

Since I work in search engine marketing, it seems obvious that I am a big believer in the internet being a useful conduit for businesses to reach their customers.

In the past I have seen companies with bricks and mortar stores sceptically start an online store and be pleasantly shocked when the online store grosses much higher revenue than any of the bricks and mortar stores, at lower cost.

The internet is great for shopping. The stores are open 24-7, you can do it from home, you can do it clandestinely at work, and you can do it as soon as you think of what you need. Also, never before have you been able to comparison shop with such ease. Consumers are doing more research, more comparison, and basically knowing a lot more about what they are buying than ever before.

Consumers are more and more often starting many purchase decisions online. For example, I needed a blow up mattress, and I liked the one my friend had. All the bricks and mortar stores missed out on my sale, because all I had to do was type the brand and product into Google, compare the prices, pick the lowest and they delivered it to my door.

Even if I didn’t know the brand and product, I probably would have still bought online, because why traipse around to a dozen different shops to compare when you can do it all in 10 minutes research online?

An article yesterday on Australia’s popular news site news.com.au promoted online shopping in Australia by providing the names of some useful websites on which to do your online shopping.

The online store Dealsdirect.com.au is an online rival for Myer and David Jones, but at the same time, you would still need to check other online retailers to compare prices.

In contrast, myshopping.com.au is one of Australia’s biggest retail sites and makes it easier to compare prices of products online, withover a million items priced. Geprice.com.au similarly allows you to compare prices, but you don’t buy from the site, you need to buy from the retailers own.

Whypayfullprice.com is a coupon site, a relatively new type of lead generator for retail and service providers. A customer goes online and types in their post code and it lets you know if there are any deals in your area you can participate in. This is a combination of on and offline shopping, but it originates online. People find coupons on here, and they will probably be more likely to buy at the coupon store than a competitor (everything else equal). A similar site is Ozbargain.com.au which highlights retailers and service providers that are offering deals, discounts, upgrades etc.  Again, this is a good way of getting your brand name to your customer before your competitor does.

An interesting reversal on the auction site is offerme.com.au, which is like a list of  Wanted ads, where you say what you want and people will offer to sell it to you.  Car insurance isn’t in there yet -when I said I wanted car insurance, it suggested some GPS thing. So then I typed in ‘air mattress’ and it suggested some air conditioners. I can see myself not wanting to be bothered with this.  Although, a good concept.

These are just some of the many ways you can sell your goods online. The one obvious I didn’t mention was my own personal favourite, marketing your own website through Search Engine Optimisation and Pay Per Click marketing. This is the best for targetting people early on in the buying cycle, those who want to do more research, or maybe even those 21st century people who want an easy quick solution. For all those potential customers starting their search by typing in the search box, you should be there for them.

This article on the ABC reminded me of the funny little filtering trial the Government is trying to put into place (wasn’t it meant to go ahead in December?), because to be honest, with the fires, and the Economic Crisis, and my establishing my business and all, I had forgotten that this even existed…

Anyway, while the article is very short, only outlining that the big ISP providers are refusing to participate (that includes iiNet, Telstra and Optus – wait, how did Telstra get out of this?), there is around 20 times the content written below the article in the comments.

This week seems to be social media week for me – posts only about user generated content, images, discussion, etc. And like I said on Monday, while it might not be as ‘impartial’ as the news (note the ‘ ‘ marks around impartial – very important), there is an overwhelming amount of user generated content compared to actual news content.

The theme of the comments regarding the Government Filter is as follows:

1. The majority who care to comment on this story believe that the filters won’t work.

2. Those who DO believe the filters will help, accuse those who don’t want them of not caring for the children (which is an excellent result for Today Tonight and the Filters PR people)

3. Many people (including the police supposedly)  think the money could be better spent going towards a police taskforce to handle this, rather than a filter (agree).

4. A filter like this worked in New Zealand (? I am trying to confirm this now, it seems strange).

5. There is some debate on whether those ISPs are actually refusing to participate, or whether they are being excluded by Conroy because they have spoken out about how they are against it.

See how much more you get from reading the comments, than reading just the news story alone? I mean, of course you can’t rely on it 100%, but hopefully the lies on each side balance the other out.  And after all, it isn’t like we have been trusting the media over the last couple of years anyway.