Dark clouds are gathering over Ask.com.

For as long as Ask.com has run ads among its search queries, it has been partnered with Google’s AdWords system, however, the deal between the two search companies is soon coming to an end. The big surprise up to this point, if you are in Ask.com’s camp, is that the deal has not yet been renewed. Many point to the fact that there is an obvious disparity in value added when one looks at the relationship between Ask.com and Google. After all, Google commands the largest market share of searchers in the world and estimates put Ask.com in fourth place behind Yahoo! and MSN with a paltry 3% of the US market and little international presence.

The major obstacle to overcome when a Big Guy and a Little Guy attempt to strike a deal is that the Big Guy wields all the power, leverage and resources and the Little Guy owns only the task of convincing the Big Guy that he still needs help from the Little Guy. In this case, there isn’t a whole lot that Ask.com brings to the table that Google doesn’t already own, operate and do better than Ask.com.

It’s true that Ask.com is a king among Little Guys, after all, here we find ourselves talking about them while Lycos, Excite, Metacrawler and Altavista (to name a few) gather cobwebs and fade into obscurity. However, the bottom line is that Ask.com is still a Little Guy and like the aforementioned Internet afterthoughts, they have struggled to achieve in the shadow of Google’s meteoric ascension. If you’re in Google’s camp, you’ve certainly taken notice.

Remember that “What is the algorithm?” advertising campaign? Well, it turns out that the majority of Americans fall into one of three categories regarding that campaign:

1) They don’t, in fact, remember it but thanks for asking.

2) They never figured out what the heck the campaign was talking about.

3) They didn’t know what the word “algorithm” meant and assumed that one of those consarned emo bands that the local news warned us about was playing at the local concert hall.

Ask.com has launched a new ad campaign and hopes to burgle a few more percentage points of the market share away from the Big Three in the process. However, as they sink dollars into advertising, it must be noted that all of this effort is simply a means to the end of appeasing Google and sealing another deal. After all, search engines are businesses and Ask.com is in the business of selling AdWords clicks. There is an inherent inefficiency behind the idea of trying to steal market share from Google just to turn around and feed Google clicks from your traffic stream, and Google knows this. Ask.com provides a steady, albeit somewhat minuscule, stream of traffic for Google AdWords, however, in the absence of Ask.com, what’s to say that Ask.com users wouldn’t become Google users by default?

Google won’t have to risk much to find out.

Without Google, Ask.com may be sunk. If the stormy seas of business claim Ask.com and its 3% market share, it might be wiser for Google to pass by the wreckage with casual indifference than to send out the lifeboats to help.

[Ed. note: the picture above was poached from LindaAnderson.com, which sells the shirts here. Normally, I wouldn't snag a picture from another site, but I thought it was perfect for this entry and thought a plug might makes us squaresies.]

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In anticipation of what analysts and investors hope to be stellar third quarter numbers for Google — as they have seen their lead over rivals stretch further in recent studies — Google’s stock shares soared to new heights today, closing at over $609 per share.

As BusinessWeek reported today, these gains have vaulted the stock to a market cap close to $200 billion:

“The shares have increased more than sevenfold from their initial public offering price of $85, bringing the nine-year-old company’s market value to $190 billion — eclipsing bigger, more mature businesses like Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Coca-Cola Co., Hewlett-Packard Co. and IBM Corp.”

The fact that the value of Google — a company barely a decade old — is now worth more than WalMart, the world’s biggest retailer and the nation’s biggest private employer, is absolutely phenomenal. It certainly makes Google, the little search engine that never advertised, one of the most amazingly successful organizations in history. Think about:

• The tens of millions of people per day, every day, that use Google to find the information, products and services they look for.
• The upwards of a million advertisers that use Google to help grow their businesses, and the amount revenue, jobs and growth that this facilitates (I would venture that this number is in the hundreds of billions of dollars globally).
• The entire economy of businesses that exist simply to help other businesses use Google to be more successful (of which Wpromote is a part)

The bottom line is that despite fears of Google wielding so much power over advertisers and consumers, it has virtually overnight become a global force and an integral part of millions of lives. And that is an accomplishment that very few organizations can lay claim to in history.

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Wpromote is sponsoring 2008 Olympic Sailing hopeful, Forrest Gay. Forrest is in the process of competing at the 2007 Olympic Trials in the Finn class. The Finn Olympic trials are currently taking place at the Newport Harbor Yacht Club in Balboa California. With 41 boats, the Finn Class will be the largest fleet at the Trials. Forrest recently placed 8th at the Finn North American Championship that took place September 21-23rd at the Coyote Point Yacht club. Forrest of course is favored to win at the Olympic trials, at least by the odds makers at Wpromote. How could he not with this sleek looking boat?

For the past year Forrest has been dedicating himself to chasing down his Olympic dream and has the full support and admiration of everyone here at Wpromote. Way to go Forrest! We are pulling for you.

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You have to hand it to Google; they never quit.

Even with the world at its feet and with an unbelievable market share in search, they never rest on their laurels. Even with the best, most intuitive search engine on the planet, they continue to look for ways to make it better. Even with by far the best search advertising platform of the big three firms (including Yahoo! Search Marketing and MSN adCenter), they never cease researching and developing new ways to shock their clients with their seemingly limitless ingenuity.

That’s not to say that Google hasn’t had help. Like a good scholar, Google has learned from history. Many argue that Yahoo! was in a similar situation to Google’s present state before the Internet stock crash and that Yahoo! even survived the ordeal pretty well. Perhaps, they survived too well since a glaring criticism of Yahoo! was that it grew lazy and stagnant, sufficiently pleased by what it had accomplished. This is a mistake that Google will not be making anytime soon.

With varying degrees of success, Google has expanded beyond the medium of search into more conventional media of advertising. Through your standard Google AdWords interface, you can advertise to people not only on search engines, but also in blogs, on content sites, in newspapers and even with audio ads on the radio. Google has never missed an opportunity to use its trove of wealth and human talent to try and capitalize beyond its normal aegis of search. Now, Google hopes to broaden its reach by offering television advertising to its users.

The debate of the merits of Google’s expanding scope continues, however, one cannot help but notice that where Google goes, so goes increased opportunity for the little guy. Although far from perfect, search has become a rare medium where Mom & Pop can rub elbows with multi-million dollar firms on the first page of the search results, provided they can wield an effective campaign. Google has also begun using its leverage to make radio and print ads more affordable for small business owners.

Aside from crummy ads on local stations and sketchy late-night infomercials, television has been the most exclusive medium for advertising in the United States. Many companies ignore television ads altogether due to impossibly high prices and the lack of concrete methods by which to track results. Now that Google is in the mix, will television advertising, at least, in certain areas, become noticeably less expensive, more accessible or easier to analyze? It’s definitely not a done deal just yet–Google has had subpar results with its still improving print department thus far–but knowing how Google functions, it is certainly exciting that they will be shaking things up among the old guard in Hollywood.

I, for one, wish Google luck. They’ve managed up to this point on hard work and talent, but to make a meaningful impact in television, a little bit of luck might go a long way.

Watch the Google TV Ads Demo Video!

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Seasonal shifts in business are normal for much of the retailing world, and the first thing that jumps to mind is of course the Holiday season, which kicks into full gear on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. On an aside, as an internet marketer, I am far more interested in Cyber Monday, when the e-commerce Christmas season kicks off (to the joy of American employers, the first work day after Thanksgiving).

Everyone knows that Christmas shopping is big business, but what may fly under the radar is exactly how huge the Halloween holiday is. Maybe it is more intriguing to me because it is so fun and impractical it all is, but year after year I am amazed at the sheer girth of the industry. In 2007, it is estimated that Americans will spend $64.82 per person on Halloween costumes, decorations, candy and cards. That is almost 10% above 2006 levels, and sends the total spend on Halloween well north of $5 Billion, a truly phenomenal sum.

Wpromote works with several top Halloween e-commerce sites, and it is amazing to see the volume of searching and shopping for Halloween costumes online. Without going into too much detail but to give you a little insider perspective:

• In the end of September, over a full month before Halloween (and weeks before anyone I know is even thinking about their costumes), just one of our search engine campaigns was generating over 4 million impressions per day, in the tens of thousands of clicks, and hundreds of costumes sold.
• Looking at last year’s data, the costume season peaks around the 24th-27th of October when all of the last minute online shoppers flood the web scrambling for costumes. We expect on those dates this year, we will see upwards of 12-15 million ad impressions daily and sales for a single campaign for a single client pushing $100,000 per day. These are just the sales generated directly from our search campaigns, and independent of their other on or off-line marketing efforts.
• While the retail gurus in general estimate a 10% rise in total Halloween-related spending in 2007, we are seeing numbers suggesting a rise of search-related sales north of 25%.
• While the Christmas season may result in retailers seeing upwards of 40% of their annual sales occurring in a two month window, Halloween retailers see perhaps the most extreme seasonality out there, with upwards of 85% of their annual revenue taking place in a mere five or so weeks. Big e-commerce Halloween sites will see their staff swell from 30 to 300 and back down to 30 in an eight-week stretch.

So, forget the numbers; what’s hot this year? Pirates are huge, Star Wars seems to be a perennial favorite, Spider Man costumes are selling like hotcakes, but this years new hot costume are the Transformers. Word to the wise though: the manufacturer underestimated demand, and most Halloween stores are already sold out or on their last batches, so go grab one while you still can!

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When Google came along in the late 90s, it was embraced by many for its obvious design, ease of use and pleasant, white background. Its beauty was in its clarity and simplicity. Whereas Yahoo had always been part search engine, part portal, Google made the wise assumption that people just wanted one place to search and only search, and so they came to their design of a stark, white page with only their logo and a search box.

Sure, they added an “I’m feeling lucky” button, but other than being reverse engineered for jokes, nobody ever really used this.

Just about a decade later, a customized version of Google was created with two big differences:

1) The screen was now black, instead of white,

2) The logo read Blackle, rather than Google.

Many are already familiar with Blackle which was meant to be a “green” alternative to Google insofar that a computer monitor susposedly uses less electricity producing the color black than it does the color white. Since so many people use Google and since Blackle produces nearly identical results as does Google with a similar user experience (with notable exceptions), many environmentally minded individuals have adopted Blackle as their primary search engine.

Despite the fact that Blackle’s evidence is suspect at best, I’ve casually ignored Blackle because, at the end of the day, at least they were trying to do something interesting, even if the bottom line was always about making money rather than saving the earth. Sure, they reinvented the wheel and completely ripped off Google, but at least they raised some semblance of awareness about energy conservation, which is definitely a good thing. Therefore, I’ve never railed against Blackle as a scam or as an unnecessary use of cyberspace real estate. To be honest, my biggest gripe with Blackle is their tragically uninspired name… I mean, Blackle? Really? That’s the best you could do?

There is, however, an even newer custom version of Google to which I cannot bear such nonchalant indifference. Pinkle has recently been tearing up the Digg charts, having been “dugg” 2,446 times as of the typing of this link-laden sentence. Here’s why I hate pink: it demeans humanity. I mean, honestly, if Blackle is Google for environmentalists, then are we to believe that Pinkle is Google for what… girls? Isn’t it inherently sexist to believe that women need pink in order to finally get jazzed about search? I would say “yes” as the data seems to suggest that women are already well integrated within the search community.
In the last few years, pink (specifically the carnation variety) has been used to try and con women into getting them to do or buy things that they otherwise wouldn’t. Take sports, for example. Pink baseball caps, pink jerseys and even pink socks have been used to try and drag women into buying merchandise for something that they, as a demographic, often completely ignore. This is just as bad as if someone were to invent a show all about dancing but then made sure to include Hall of Fame athletes like Emmit Smith and Jerry Rice just to trick men into watching it. Oh, wait…

Anyway, long story short, Pinkle is a terrible idea and is likely, somehow setting the women’s movement back at least twenty by its mere existence. No, I don’t have any data to back this up, but neither does Blackle in its claim to be saving the planet. Worst of all, I fear that we are opening a door for more rip-off sites with terrible names to be churned out. I mean, seriously, what’s next? Greenle? Yellowle? Purplele? Actually, that last one sounds like it might be pronounced “Purp-lay-lay” which is actually pretty cool sounding. Hmmm…

Okay, I’ve got to go do something completely unrelated to creating purplele.com right now. Thanks for reading; good night!

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