

Google: Yes, Sponsored Post Campaign Was Ours But Not What We Signed-Up For - thenextcorner
http://searchengineland.com/google-yes-sponsored-post-campaign-was-ours-but-not-what-we-signed-up-for-106457

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mwexler
While much of the anger makes sense, why do folks keep harping on Google for
using 3rd parties for their marketing? I know of no media or marketing company
of any reasonable size that doesn't outsource some part of their marketing to
another agency or marketing services company. Yes, even agencies outsource
some of the work to promote themselves... to an agency.

Should Google have more oversight into what they are paying for? Sure, just
like everyone who hires a 3rd party to do stuff under their name and aegis.
But just because Google have built the technology to run video ads, do we
naturally believe that they also have the creative, marketing ops, and other
pieces/talent/staff necessary to build, manage, measure, and improve the
campaign? Perhaps, but from a resource and efficiency POV, they may find it
cheaper to just outsource that to an agency and keep fewer resource in-house
for marketing vs., say, engineering.

It's ok for companies to purchase services from other companies. Not keeping a
close eye on what you've bought, however, is another matter.

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gerggerg
I think the big issue that's bothering people is the potential for hypocrisy.
This event clearly proves that shit happens and if google doesn't either ban
it's own chrome from search results or loosen up on it's rules for bans and
appeals then they are being fully hypocritical.

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nr0mx
Well, they've penalized the Google Chrome page according to this update:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3421468>

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potatolicious
Wow, I can't believe they wrung _that_ much text out of such a small issue -
tempest in a teapot indeed.

Maybe the top 1/4 of the post is actually useful. Google apparently caught
"sponsoring" blog posts to promote Chrome. Google denies knowledge, marketing
firm admits to doing it without Google approval.

The website then spent the next 3/4 of the article trying to invent a
conspiracy theory around it, with the author throwing in some choice weasel
words to make it seem like outsourced marketing is suspicious behavior.

Then more words are spent trying to spin this very common, very simple mistake
into a conspiracy theory. Couldn't we have found a better link for this?

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sullivandanny
This very common, very simple mistake was done by the company with the biggest
video ad network in the world, which advises others on how to do video
advertising.

This very common, very simple mistake was also don by the company which over
the past year has tossed hundreds of sites into oblivion from its search
engines, because they had content that was deemed too "thin" and warned others
not to do the same.

This very common, very simple mistake was also done by the same company that
has banned or penalized other companies over purchasing links through
sponsored posts, even if those companies protested that they didn't know
better and that a middleman was involved.

So how did I wring that much out of this "small" issue. Simple. It's not a
small issue.

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potatolicious
Again, tempest in a teapot. Apparent bad behavior is uncovered, immediate
denial is issued. Followup investigation reveals that a third party contractor
acted out of line, has admitted guilt, and remedial action taken.

A minor scandal by all measures. Embarrassing maybe, and probably worth a good
look over how Google chooses its third party contractors, nothing more.

> _"by the company which over the past year has tossed hundreds of sites into
> oblivion from its search engines, because they had content that was deemed
> too "thin""_

This would be scandalous if Google actually _did_ participate in a blog-payola
situation, which they didn't.

> _"done by the company with the biggest video ad network in the world, which
> advises others on how to do video advertising"_

Have you _worked_ in a big company before? The fact that you expect the Chrome
team to be "advising others on how to do video advertising" is pretty far out.
Breaking: corporate communications in giant companies is substantially less
than perfect. Film at 11.

> _"Simple. It's not a small issue."_

The _only_ way this could be construed as a major issue is if Google's lying
about the rogue contractor and _did_ in fact knowingly engage the bloggers. Do
you have evidence of this?

I honestly cannot see how this is nefarious. Google screwed up and picked a
crappy contractor for this work. Everyone goes home with egg on their faces.
To generalize and extrapolate this to see malice _really_ demands some
substantiating evidence that Google did this on purpose.

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sullivandanny
Yes, when JC Penney was discovered to have purchased links through the actions
of a third-party, and said hey, it was the contractors fault, Google
immediately say "Oh, that's OK, no reason to penalize you."

Oh, wait. They didn't. They slapped a ranking penalty on the company, because
ultimately it was JC Penney's responsibility.

Google did participate in a blog for payola situation. The fact that it
employed third parties that got it involved in that doesn't magically excuse
it from potential penalties.

This wasn't some "rogue" contractor that just did whatever it wanted. This was
an agency Google hired, which in turn worked with another agency, that ran
this campaign. These companies were engaged by Google.

Did Google expect this type of mess? No. Should Google have been watching for
it? Absolutely. Either no one at Google bothered to fully examine the final
and promised work product or they did and were dumb enough to let this go
forward. Neither speaks well about this case.

And to date, I still haven't gotten Google or the agency to provide more
specifics about what was expected or promised. That generally isn't a positive
sign.

I think someone at Google got a pitch about doing some viral blogging thing to
promote Chrome. They probably decided cool, go for it. They probably didn't
examine exactly what was going to happen. They almost certainly didn't plan to
buy links or have garbage content be produced. There almost certainly wasn't
some evil plot to do all this.

But that's not the point. The point is that this did happen, by a company that
when others do this, passes out penalties against them, regardless of the
excuses. That's why it's an important story, and I'm sorry that's lost on you.
It's not lost on many other people.

Including Google, by the way. That's why Google's own spam team has penalized
Google Chrome's page.

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protomyth
What would Google's response be if Microsoft or another product developer had
done this? Would they have pages banned?

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jfruh
"In this case, Google were subjected to this activity through media that
encouraged bloggers to create what appeared to be paid posts, were often of
poor quality and out of line with Google standards. We apologize to Google who
clearly didn’t authorize this."

"Google were subjected to this activity through media that encouraged
bloggers"

Wow, if someone could parse that, I'd be grateful.

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chc
It's a blame-evading way of saying something like "Google has had to suffer
the consequences of our decision to reach out to bloggers and encourage them…"

(I think the most confusing word in the original is "media" — that's
essentially PR-speak for "communication.")

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gojomo
Sullivan keeps saying some form of this:

 _There’s no reason to talk about payment based on Google PageRank unless you
expressly care about link juice. It is Google’s own measure of the ability for
a page to pass along link juice._

That's not strictly true. PageRank is equally an indication of net _inlink_
significance. Also, both in its original incarnation and via all the black-box
tweaks since (like weighting by actual clickstream data), it is highly
correlated with overall visits/'eyeballs'.

So you could rationally be interested in a site's PageRank even if you were
just doing a branding/reach-the-most-readers campaign, and truly were
ambivalent about outlinks/link-juice. It's a strong proxy for total
viewership.

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gojomo
Plausible, but would Google accept the same excuse from another company facing
enforcement action for buying outlinks?

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Cybersky
Google is bad. Most intelligent adults agree.

