Look out Groupon: Google Offers Launches | Yipit Blog

Google offers unveiled a sign-up page today for their new Google Offers program, a direct competitor to Groupon, LivingSocial and the 475 other daily deal sites aggregated by Yipit.
Interestingly, Google offers seems to be taking a very similar approach to existing daily deal sites.

• 50% off or more. Google states that they “partner with some of the best local businesses in your area to bring you great deals at 50% off or more.” The lower bound of 50% off is one of the key underpinnings of Groupon and LivingSocial’s offerings. Google clearly wants its users to perceive these offers very differently from regular coupons.
• Email distribution. Google will be distributing these offers via email. Google states that they’ll “send you regular emails letting you in on amazing offers in your area.”
• Opt-in. Google is not auto-subscribing their users to this program. They are asking user to sign-up for Google Offers via the Google Offers landing page.

It doesn’t appear that Google is initially integrating this offering with other Google products like Google Maps, Google Search or Gmail which could boost the effectiveness of Google Offers. For example, a deep integration with Gmail could significantly increase conversion rates on the offerings.
The new offering is currently limited to Portland, the San Francisco Bay Area and New York City.
New York City makes sense as an initial test market. We’ve received reports of several New York City businesses getting calls from Google representatives pitching them on a daily deal like product similar to Groupon and LivingSocial.

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Google and Bing - handbags at dawn / Matthew Oxley, head of search, Gravytrain

As a marketer, there’s no way you could have possibly avoided hearing about the recent Bing "copying" search results from Google saga. Regardless of how much attention this specific issue is getting, there's more at stake than just a few long tail search results. Indeed, search quality as a whole is still a minor issue in comparison to the apparent significance of this.

Google have gone to a huge amount of effort to expose Bing – and, in a rather bizarre move, have registered hiybbprqag.com which now points towards Google's Jobs page. Google will certainly feel they've scored some good points over Microsoft with this episode and I don’t doubt that they’ll be pleased with their Bing sting operation.  However, I can’t help but think if exposing Microsoft really was the best idea for Google in this instance?

I'm guessing there were some Bing engineers who might have thought copying Google was an extremely clever idea. Also, some people in management probably thought this was an ingenious way of taking advantage of Google's superior search algorithm to cover up the inefficiencies of their own. I don't think, however, that the top folks at Microsoft - those focused on the big picture - would think this quite so clever.

Taking advantage of the fact that many people still have Internet Explorer installed by default to allegedly copy their rival is naughty.  Also, using it in this way is the polar opposite to ‘real’ innovation. The problem isn’t that Bing got caught out but more that it allows Microsoft to avoid having to face up to the bigger issue.

Two technology giants

Microsoft and Google are two technology giants locked into a war on many fronts.  Search, operating systems and applications are all key battlegrounds for both parties, making the combined stakes monumental.

The sad truth for Microsoft is that, certainly in the field of search, they are an inferior company to their Californian rivals. Many senior Microsoft execs might well be honest enough to admit that Google’s advantages go beyond having a search proposition – they have an impressive culture where talent and innovation seem to thrive. The harsh reality for Microsoft is that they need to close this gap and close it fast.

The search engine business is a multi-billion dollar industry, so it’s no surprise that Bing would want to improve the quality of their search results in any way possible.  However, if Microsoft fail to innovate here, they’ll probably fail to innovate elsewhere – a problem which would overshadow any minor benefit they might be capturing from this.

Right now, it would appear that Microsoft is choosing to hide rather than face their rival head-on. Indeed, the better choice for Google on discovering this might well have been to quietly chuckle and let them continue.

Matthew Oxley, head of search, Gravytrain

Bing smacks Google in new usability test

Cadbury Dairy Milk ad delivered more than £2 of short-term sales for every £1 spent

Online exposure for a Cadbury Dairy Milk ad delivered more than £2 of short-term sales for every £1 spent, according to the first case study from a panel measuring media consumption against FMCG sales data.

TV reached a bigger audience but delivered only 60p of short-term sales for every £1 spent.
Online delivered 19% additional reach for the campaign, in particular reaching a higher proportion of younger consumers than TV.

Cadbury's 'Chocolate Charmer' campaign was tracked by the Media Efficiency Panel, a joint initiative between GfK NOP and Kantar Worldpanel that was seed-funded by Google.