Google gets interesting, but will users care?

March 11, 2009
by Richard Gregory

While the majority of the blogosphere is focused on the privacy implications of this product, Google has a rather simple but effective way of dealing with this. Basically, individuals are free to modify there “interests” with an ad preferences page reachable either by the user typing in the URL http://www.google.com/ads/preferences on clicking on the “Ads By Google” link at the bottom of a display ad on a Google partner site.

And that’s where the real problem is, I believe. While Google has posted this information on their blog, and all of us digital junkies have digested this information, the average web consumer will be oblivious to this new product. The same happened in 2005 when Google launched Click-to-Call but it failed and was closed in 2007.

If Google truly believes it has developed a revolutionary product that puts advertising in the hands of the consumers, surely they should do a consumer focussed campaign promoting this fact? Isn’t it time Google embarked upon a consumer education piece that evangelises some of their new functionality? Without this communication consumers are unlikely to adopt these new products, and this means there will be no additional ad revenue to be gained.