Microsoft To Spend $2 Billion On Bing Ads In The UK

As fans of "The Office" may know, it's fairly common for the entertainment industry to take a successful concept and adapt it for use overseas.  And now, Microsoft's performing a similar conversion, launching a "Bing and decide" advertising campaign in the U.K.

It's a good bet that you've seen a couple of these amusing TV spots by now; they feature one person trying to talk to another, but the second individual, suffering from "search overload," is only able to respond by rattling off absurd details related to certain keywords.

It's commercials in this vein that Microsoft intends to air in the U.K., starting this Wednesday and continuing through the middle of June.  Mark Sweney reported that the campaign will cost the company a significant amount: $2 billion.

Ashley Highfield, who used to work for the BBC and now holds the lengthy title "Managing Director & VP, Consumer & Online UK" at Microsoft, also assured Sweney, "This is a big moment - we are taking out our slingshots and taking on Goliath."

Highfield didn't lay out what sort of market share gains Microsoft hopes to make as a result of this ad campaign.

Google Improves Click-To-Call Ads With Phone Extensions

A little more than a month ago, Google introduced click-to-call phone numbers in local ads on smartphones.  Now, the popular program's undergoing an expansion as Google's made it easier for large companies to take advantage of the offering.

A post on the Inside AdWords blog explained today, "[W]e're bringing the same click-to-call benefits to national advertisers through phone extensions.  Phone extensions allow you to add a phone number that will be displayed whenever your ad is triggered, regardless of the user's location."

Here's the upshot, then: "This enables customers to connect with your business by phone directly from the ad and can be especially useful if you have a call center to handle customer inquiries."

Advertisers should profit as a result of this development, considering that phone calls are more likely than clicks to lead to purchases.  Google looks set to make a lot of money, too, since this move will encourage corporations with big advertising budgets to give click-to-call ads a shot.

Perhaps the only losers will be the companies that don't adapt quickly.  They'll risk losing sales to competitors with more eye-catching and actionable ads.

Google Buzz Draws New Content-Scraping Controversy

Update 2:  Google offered the following statement: "Buzz can only expand to show whatever was in the underlying feed. For example, if an item is truncated in the feed to only include 200 characters, then Buzz will only show 200 characters."

So, in other words, Bloggers can prevent their full content from showing in Buzz just like in a reader, depending on how they set up their feed.

Update: So far, Google has referred me to the same response they gave Stay, but I've inquired further. We'll keep you posted.

Original Article: If you were under the impression that the controversy surrounding Google Buzz was starting to die down, think again. So far, we've mostly heard about privacy issues, which Google has publicly addressed. They've also made changes based on user feedback. Now, we're hearing about possible copyright issues. Google appears to be republishing full articles without permission, and stripping out any ads that may be in those articles.

One can easily see why any blogger or publisher wouldn't be very pleased with this scenario. Not only are they serving up full articles that others have written without sending authors the traffic or even ad clicks, but if a user reads the article through Buzz within their Gmail account, they will likely see the ads Google itself serves.

Blogger Jesse Stay of Stay N' Alive brings the subject up in a post, claiming that this is exactly what is happening to his content. However, Google did respond to him, saying they would "have the ad scraping issue fixed by next week." That would solve one problem, but presumably, this doesn't change the fact that they are showing full article text, which is an interesting choice on Google's part, considering the controversy surrounding how Google News aggregates publishers' content.

That is a different situation entirely, because Google News does not publish full articles (unless they come from one of their partners). They simply provide a title, small snippet, and link to the original source, hence driving traffic to that source. Based on Stay's story, Google will not likely be driving much traffic by showing full articles in Buzz. We've contacted Google for comment on this (we'll post when we receive it).

One might compare reading an article through Buzz to reading one through a feed reader, like Google Reader. Sometimes you can read a feed in its full text, but the author has the ability to prevent this. With Buzz, the full-text articles appear to be coming simply from people sharing the articles, which is out of the author's control (we asked Google if their is a way authors can prevent this...again, we'll post a response when we receive it).

Does Google Buzz Deserve All the Criticism It’s Gotten?

Google Buzz has been a magnet for skepticism, controversy, and criticism since it launched earlier this month. The skepticism is a result of past Google social media efforts not having the greatest track record. Much of the controversy and criticism has been the result of privacy, and more recently copyright concerns from users.

Google Buzz launched with auto-following, and among countless other complaints, that led to one woman complaining about being re-connected with her abusive ex-husband, just because they had previous correspondence through Gmail. Google addressed this, and has made various changes to Buzz since launch based on user feedback.

This week, blogger Jesse Stay raised the issue of content being shared on Buzz without the ads that go with it, while Google shows its own ads. Google quickly responded to this as well, saying that they expected to have the issue fixed by next week.

For all the criticism, there are still plenty of people out there that view Buzz as a good tool, and a step in the right direction from Google, with regards to social media. Some even think the extensive criticism has gone a bit further than Google deserves.

"As a big company, Google has an incredible microscope focused on their every activity," Silicon Valley blogger Louis Gray tells WebProNews. "Those people who are naturally distrusting of large companies with high market share are aggressively looking for ways to highlight weakness or issues with Google Buzz. While Google no doubt made some early missteps, and has apologized for them, the reaction has far outweighed the potential issues."

A common sentiment seen throughout the Blogosphere is that Google simply rushed Google Buzz out a little quicker than it should have. Even many of Buzz's critics have no problem admitting that Buzz has a great deal of potential to thrive. I discussed this potential at length upon the launch of the service.

Right out of the box, it seemed clear that Google was onto something with Buzz that it had not been able to tap into before - a way of taking its existing services and building its own social network in and around those - a strategy some of us have been expecting for quite some time. Buzz quickly drew in users (some didn't have much of a choice if they were Gmail users).

It's important to consider that Buzz hasn't even been around for an entire month yet. It's already gotten tons of publicity (even though some has been negative, Google has been pretty good about turning much of that around). Publishers and bloggers have been quick to jump on the Buzz bandwagon and promote their Buzz profiles. How long did it take people to "get" Twitter? Some people still haven't gotten there.

Google will be integrating Buzz into more of its products, and will no doubt be adding more useful features as time goes on, most likely making it more appealing to users. It's just in Google's nature to crank out new features for its products. The biggest advantage Google has with Buzz is that Google already has so many users among all of its products, and ultimately, it can put Buzz wherever it wants. I have a feeling Buzz has barely scratched the surface of what it will be. But we'll see.

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