8 ms·

Google: Yes, Sponsored Post Campaign Was Ours But Not What We Signed-Up For

59 points by thenextcorner 15y ago

mwexler 15y ago
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.
- gerggerg 15y ago
  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.
  - mjwalshe 15y ago
    Potential - it is hypocritical
  - nr0mx 15y ago
    Well, they've penalized the Google Chrome page according to this update: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3421468 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3421468
jfruh 15y ago
"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.
- chc 15y ago
  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.")
potatolicious 15y ago
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?
- sullivandanny 15y ago
  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.
  - potatolicious 15y ago
    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.
protomyth 15y ago
What would Google's response be if Microsoft or another product developer had done this? Would they have pages banned?
Cybersky 15y ago
Google is bad. Most intelligent adults agree.
gojomo 15y ago
Plausible, but would Google accept the same excuse from another company facing enforcement action for buying outlinks?
gojomo 15y ago
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.

59 points by thenextcorner 15y ago

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.

gerggerg 15y ago
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.
- mjwalshe 15y ago
  Potential - it is hypocritical
- nr0mx 15y ago
  Well, they've penalized the Google Chrome page according to this update: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3421468 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3421468

jfruh 15y ago

"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.

chc 15y ago
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.")

potatolicious 15y ago

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?

sullivandanny 15y ago
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.
- potatolicious 15y ago
  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.

protomyth 15y ago

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

Cybersky 15y ago

Google is bad. Most intelligent adults agree.

gojomo 15y ago

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

gojomo 15y ago

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.