Google Turns to Your Past Emails to Make Ads More Relevant

Google has made some changes to the way ads shown to Gmail users are selected. If you use the service, you have probably noticed that Google often shows ads that are somehow related to the content of whatever piece of email you are currently reading. If you have noticed this, you have probably also noticed that sometimes the ads don't seem to have anything to do with your conversation whatsoever.

Google has decided that instead of showing completely irrelevant ads in such cases, it will just dig back into another conversation from your Gmail usage, and show you ads related to that. This is illustrated in the clip below.

"Let's say you're looking at a confirmation email from a hotel in Chicago. Next to your email, you might see ads about flights to Chicago," explains Gmail Product Manager Steve Crossan. "But sometimes, there aren't any good ads to match to a particular message. From now on, you'll sometimes see ads matched to another recent email instead. For example, let's say you're looking at a message from a friend wishing you a happy birthday. If there aren't any good ads for birthdays, you might see the Chicago flight ads related to your last email instead."

Google is careful to point out that it doesn't store any extra information to show these ads. It just picks a different recent email to match. It's all automated, and no humans are involved in picking the ads. The process is compared to Gmail's spellchecker. Google also notes that no email or personal information is shared with advertisers.

The change will be rolling out over the next several days, so if you are still seeing ads completely irrelevant to any conversation you've had, you may not have the new system implemented yet.

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Hulu Partners With “American Idol” Creator For Web Reality Show

Simon Fuller, creator of "American Idol," is partnering with Hulu on an online reality program that follows the lives of five people hoping to make it in Hollywood.

The new online program called "If I Can Dream" will launch in early 2010 with each episode streaming exclusively on Hulu. Hulu says "If I Can Dream" will be the first recurring show to be available to international audiences.

Hulu and Clear Channel will create a distribution partnership with MySpace as well. "If I Can Dream" will have a customized page on MySpace allowing fans of the show to interact with the cast via comments and sharing.

The ad-supported program has signed on Pepsi and Ford as its first two major sponsors.

"Innovate is not a buzzword for Simon Fuller and 19 Entertainment. They've consistently delivered extremely high quality content in innovative ways, and helped to change how viewers engage with entertainment," said Andy Forssell, SVP of Content and Distribution at Hulu. "That's a great match with what Hulu is all about,
 

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Report Indicates Google Bought Gizmo5

Not long ago, Eric Schmidt estimated that Google would start making monthly acquisitions.  Today, it's almost looking like the dial got bumped up to hourly, since following this morning's confirmed acquisition of AdMob, a report has indicated that Google's bought Gizmo5, too.

Gizmo5 is a VoIP firm.  Two recent company blog posts are titled "Introducing GizmoVoice - A Free Phone Line Using Google & Gizmo5" and "Add Gizmo5 Calling Directly To Gmail!" so it's clear that there are some strong links between it and Google.

Two less obvious details also make them a good match, since the Gizmo5 homepage is dotted with the word "free" (as we all know, Google rarely charges for things) and the Gizmo5 site is available in nine languages (Google loves to serve lots of countries).

Anyway, Michael Arrington, who was the first to write about the rumored acquisition, predicted that Gizmo5 will fill a vital role.  "Gizmo5 will be the glue that puts Google Voice and Google Talk together into a single product," he stated.  "And that product looks a lot like a Skype competitor."

Arrington put Gizmo5's price at $30 million (in cash).  Gizmo5's site has since become quite slow, but we'll keep an eye out for official confirmation.

Have You Read This?

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Do We Really Watch That Many Online Videos?

This week comScore has released the latest numbers regarding video viewed online and I am still scratching my head. According to the findings (remember class, repeat after me – “It’s research and research ain’t perfect”) in August of 2009 there were just over 25 billion videos viewed by the approximately 161 million US Internet users. That works out to be an average of 157 videos viewed per user during that time period. Google sites alone accounted for over 10 billion of those videos with 99% of that number coming from YouTube. This number eclipses the previous month’s results and I am wondering if this economy is a main contributor to this amount of ‘free time’.

I am still shaking my head. Maybe it’s just me but that seems ridiculously high. I am a heavy Internet user. I spend considerable hours everyday on the computer researching etc, etc but I come nowhere near watching 5 video clips per day. I admit I probably have the TV on too much so maybe being online is a vacation of sorts with regard to watching video. I don’t know. Am I just a really low user of online video content?

Take a look at the comScore chart below to see how just how dominant Google (which is 99% YouTube in this case) is in this space as well.

So help me here. If you fall in line with these numbers, meaning you are a profile match to the just over 5 videos viewed per day type, what is it that you are watching? Of course, this is rated PG blog for the most part so anything deviant just keep to yourself and continue seeking help but please don’t share it here.

In fact, let’s take a look at a specific type of video viewing. Let’s keep it to marketing / advertising / product related videos. As marketers we need to be careful not to just look at this large number and automatically assume that everyone is watching videos about products or something that is related to our work. I have learned to never underestimate the power and allure of “stupid human tricks” video viewing which could simply be an escape mechanism for people at their desks who can’t wait to get out of the office.

What if the percentage of videos viewed that relate to marketing functions is just a small fraction of the total audience? That would be the number that we should be paying close attention to and not chase video’s version of a shiny object that will end up eating up valuable time and resources.

Thanks for stopping by and we look forward to hearing from you.

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