MSFT Integrating CPA into Search

Microsoft is going to make an announcement later this morning about product search and a new “cashback” program. (It’s being called “bribery;” it’s not.) I’m sworn to uphold the embargo, but others have either learned about it or broken the embargo and written about it. Here’s my post on SEL.

Among the several interesting things about the new program is the integration of a CPA model in search. Last year at the SMX Local-Mobile conference I asked the question whether CPA was the “ultimate local ad model.” The answer the panelists gave was “no.” They thought a range of models would continue to exist for local.

Lead-gen for local businesses has been around for a long long time (Cars, Real Estate) but it’s had limited success and has a very mixed reputation. It’s being revived by sites such as Matchpoint, among others (such as GenBook, Booking Angel). And Caliber Data is trying to extend this to the point of sale with a loyalty card.

What do people think about CPA models penetrating or gaining more traction in local? (PPCall is a form of CPA).

Online Booking for SMBs and CPA

Bob Tedeschi’s NY Times column today examines online booking/calendaring and three sites that are competing in more or less the same segment: Hourtown, Booking Angel and GenBook.

GenBook appears farthest along with business development and Hourtown is using a subscription model rather than CPA/PPBooking, which the other two favor. OpenTable and online hotel reservations before it have proven these systems will work.

It’s a very interesting segment that has value to bring to publishers and SMBs. It’s also not without challenges — not the least of which is how the sales channel partners position these products beside clicks, calls, placement, etc.  There’s also some potential consumer behavior issues, which might vary by industry segment.

ZocDoc is addressing potential consumer hesitation to book unknown doctors and dentists online by building a Yelp-like directory site around the booking functionality.

Don’t have time to say much more . . . off to CTIA.

Offline Conversion Tracking

Christine Churchill writes a good piece about offline conversion tracking today on Search Engine Land. This is the key in opening many people’s eyes to the power of local. Local is really about where the money changes hands. It doesn’t happen online.

The Internet is a marketing platform that influences purchase decisions that happen — not online — but in the physical world (read: local). Yet offline conversion tracking is an immature business with calls, coupons and surveys being among the only mechanisms available.

Only coupons truly reflect offline conversions; other methodologies are about self reporting or proxy behavior (clicking on maps, send to phone, calls). Some folks (i.e., AOL and Caliber data) are working on loyalty card POS tie ins that will enable tracking down to the register.

But mobile also represents an interesting bridge between the online and offline worlds that will create more visibility over time on the Internet’s impact on offline purchase behavior.

Superpages Video Launch Update

I just got off the phone with Eric Chandler and Robyn Rose, president and VP of marketing for Superpages respectively. As usual they were extremely candid and forthcoming, which I really appreciate.

Chandler explained that Superpages actually had introduced video ads on its site “four or five years ago, but we were way too early.” Now the timing is right and advertiser demand is growing. Consumer behavior associated with video is also well established. Another report is due out this week from Pew, confirming again the popularity of online video.

Superpages intends to syndicate video to a range of destinations, including, potentially, its current network of PPClick partners. What’s interesting is that Chandler said they were also open to syndicating video to other Internet yellow pages sites.

I was told that Superpages is charging a production fee of “under $1,000″ and then a per click/stream fee for each viewing of the video. This is unlike the Citysearch fee structure that bundles video production into an overall ad spend at a certain price threshold.

The per-stream charge will be auction-based, like Superpages’ PPC and “pay for calls” products. There will be a floor and bidding will similarly be category based rather than keyword based.

Chandler said he thought that the value of the videos sat “between clicks and calls,” with calls being the most valuable ad unit. But we also discussed the possibility that ego and the analogy to TV might drive the competition and prices for video up above many categories of calls.

He then told me that in their calls packages the pricing floor for calls had been increased to $10 per call. He said that there were “a la carte” options for calls that still preserved lower per-call bid pricing. I asked about the range of pricing and the response was “anywhere from $2 to over $100″ per call.

I also asked about Superpages’ click to call offering, which I had thought disappeared but is somewhat more buried behind phone numbers now. They said that it had “plateaued” after ramping “up to a point.” Google recently discontinued click to call.

Regarding syndication Chandler also discussed the possibility that it would eventually include cable TV in addition to the Internet.

Perhaps most interesting of all was that now, with the various PPClick and calls packages that Superpages is selling, the company is often within “80% to 85%” of print spending on a per advertiser basis. What that means is that if Superpages can successfully spend online advertiser budgets it will be making, in some cases, 80%+ of print on a gross basis. Margins are lower online. Chandler said that while cannibalization had been “minimal” to date, they were seeing more interest from advertisers in online products. Video will only increase that trend.

We also discussed that Superpages traffic and platform “agnosticism” was driven as much by pure economics as the company’s “openness.” If Superpages can drive more quality traffic from whatever source, it can make more revenue. “As bid rates go up you don’t need as many streams, calls or clicks,” added Chandler.

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Related: Superpages does distribution deal with Jingle’s Free411 for pay-for-calls advertisers.

SuperPages Signs Deal with DirectoryM

To syndicate its advertisers out through DirectoryM’s publisher network. From the release:

Idearc Media Corp. and DirectoryM today announced a distribution agreement that allows Idearc to place its Superpages.com® advertisers’ content on the DirectoryM online advertising network. Under this agreement, Superpages.com’s performance-based advertisers will now be available within the DirectoryM directory which is distributed through some of the most highly trafficked sites on the web including Newsweek, PC World, Inc, The Financial Times, and the 42 regional business journals published by American City Business Journals.

Not much to say about this beyond the fact that SuperPages continues to try and aggressively syndicate to build more click and exposure opportunities for its advertisers.

Here’s DirectoryM’s directory on the Newsweek site (below the fold in the left column):

Clicking on the category “architects” and then “California” and then “San Francisco” yields this:

It’s essentially “lead-gen” so it’s interesting to consider how this might be priced vs. PPC (clicks/calls) advertising that SuperPages is otherwise emphasizing. These leads are probably pretty good given that it takes some time and determination to get to this final screen.

Skype Launches Local, Social Search

The Kelsey Group’s Mike Boland posted on this on Friday: Skype, which has yet to prove full value for eBay, has launched version 3.1 that combines local search with social recommendations (and presumably later PPCall):

As part of Skype 3.1 Beta you can now use SkypeFind to recommend your favourite local businesses to your friends and the entire Skype community.

In May last year I argued that Skype could be thought of as a “social network with voice.” While this is one angle on what Skype is doing it’s a very interesting one. Ultimately voice for Skype is just an entry point into a larger play and ad model.

eBay is using Skype to facilitate buyer-seller interaction; and Skype and Google have an “infrastructure” deal that lays the groundwork for a broadening of PPCall on both networks.

Panama to ‘Launch’ in March

Bloomberg is reporting that Panama will officially “launch” in March. However, Yahoo! is migrating search clients now to the new platform so what this means is that the migration will be complete in March.

Yahoo! will likely benefit from more paid-search revenue and increased spending. From the article:

Stuart Larkins, vice president of search at Chicago-based Performics, said spending [on Yahoo!] may rise as much as 45 percent for some clients. He said 15 to 20 of his 200 clients will start using Panama by the end of this week.

But market share affects ad revenue:

Matt Naeger, vice president at Pittsburgh-based Impaqt said clients typically spend about 60 to 70 percent of their budgets on Google, while about 20 to 25 percent goes to Yahoo. Microsoft Corp. typically gets 10 to 15 percent, he said.

Is Mobile the ‘Sweet Spot’ for PPCall?

Ingenio today is announcing a relationship with “white label” mobile search vendor JumpTap:

Ingenio Pay Per Call advertisements appear in response to consumer queries on devices that leverage JumpTap’s carrier-branded offering. Leading carriers, including Alltel, use JumpTap’s mobile search solution to drive revenue while providing a comprehensive mobile search experience for consumers. The Pay Per Call advertiser only pays when a consumer initiates a call to the business from their mobile phone, thus providing measurable advertising-driven results.

Here’s ClickZ’s article on the deal.

JumpTap’s value proposition is that it can offer a complete mobile search and monetization package to carriers to make their mobile search capabilities competitive with branded search engines that are now aggressively moving into the mobile space. Until recently the conventional wisdom had been that US carriers wouldn’t do deals with search engines because they were fearful of becoming merely a “dumb pipe.” However, the recent Microsoft-Sprint alliance calls that assumption into question. AllTell Wireless is JumpTap’s highest visibility partnership. (Medio is a JumpTap competitor.)

For JumpTap, the Ingenio deal offers a ready supply of advertisers. For Ingenio it offers another mobile distribution partner in a growing list. Ingenio also has mobile distribution through Microsoft (via Live.com mobile search and the Sprint relationship.) It also has mobile distribution relationships with AOL, go2, UpSnap and Jingle Network’s 1800 Free411.

Mobile, at least in the near term, is the emerging “sweet spot” for PPCall. There are some challenges with PPCall on the desktop that go mainly to query volume. Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft, which control the bulk of online search traffic – mostly Google and Yahoo! – have yet to adopt PPCall online. Google has implemented “click-to-call” and so has Microsoft. However, these click-to-call offerings are not currently PPCall, although they could support it. Yahoo! has tested PPCall but has yet to implement it online.

Recent research from Nielsen and WebVisible shows that the majority of consumers are inclined to use the phone to contact local businesses they discover online vs other contact methods:

• 68% said they would most likely use the phone number on the website to contact a vendor
• 16% said they would contact a vendor by email
• 11% said they would most likely contact a vendor via an online form
• 6% said they would visit a vendor in-person

Despite this consumer behavior and the promise of PPCall, it hasn’t yet penetrated to where the volume of local search traffic is today online. Ingenio has built an impressive network. However AOL, which controls only about 6% of monthly search traffic — about 390 million queries, with 78 million having a local intent (let’s say) — remains Ingenio’s largest volume distribution partner. (These are obviously meaningful volumes, but not the billions going on over at G and Y!.)

Until PPCall kicks in on Google and Yahoo! the currently circulating forecast numbers are too aggressive. The original forecast The Kelsey Group’s Neal Polachek and I did for PPCall in early ‘05 was based on various hypothetical scenarios and assumptions that have yet to come to pass. In other words, everything changes for online PPCall when it is adopted by the engines driving the greatest query volume.

That stands in marked contract to what’s going on in mobile. There, Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft are in various stages of deploying PPCall. Merchant contacts (conversions) in the mobile context are significantly higher, from about 4% to over 20% in some cases. This is based on the fact that there’s less “competition” in a small-screen mobile (or DA) environment, and typically one relevant ad is served. Thus the device, the use case and the contact method (calling the merchant) are all aligned for PPCall in a mobile environment.

Keyword Prices and Brands

SEM firm Fathom Online has been reporting flat (or declining) average keyword prices for the past several quarters. But that doesn’t entirely make sense.

Paid search revenues keep going up, driven in part by an influx of new advertisers. If you have more advertisers and more revenues in search it would suggest more competition over keywords. That’s especially true if you recognize that 75% - 80% of search queries are for “generic” or “category” terms.

And as search becomes recognized as a branding medium (not a pure one but one nonetheless), you also should have large advertisers trying to “own” terms or categories associated with their products. Once the brand budget gets tapped and direct response ROI considerations are thrown out the window, the top slots will all get more expensive and flush out the direct response types — at least in selected high-profile categories.

These dynamics should be driving keyword price increases and inflation, which in turn will drive advertisers to other forms of online marketing. Now keyword prices have apparently jumped. I would expect that to be the new trend.

Here’s eMarketer-compiled data from Fathom and research firm InightExpress:

Recognizing that paid search will eventually become too costly for some traditional SEM advertisers Google is trying to build out other options for them. For example, here’s a quote from eBags.com co-founder Peter Cobb, from a November 6 WSJ article about Google’s recent print newspaper “alpha” test:

Peter Cobb, co-founder of eBags.com, said he is attracted by possibly targeting specific groups of consumers through newspapers and tailoring ads for cities where certain types of bags or luggage are more popular.

At the same time, eBags.com has seen the cost of Web advertising through Google — which is priced via competitive auction — triple or quadruple in some cases amid big increases in online ad spending by rival retailers. “Costs are going up online, efficiencies are decreasing — we’re looking for other opportunities,” Mr. Cobb said.

Search + Display: Two Great Tastes . . .

I’m about to get on a plane, but here’s a Yahoo! release that reflects research on the beneficial combined impact of paid search and display advertising:

The research was based on results from actual advertising campaigns from Fortune 100 companies in several vertical categories. The overall results showed that when viewed together, campaigns that take advantage of both search and display advertising are far more engaging and effective than those viewed individually. Online users who were exposed to both the search and display advertising campaigns increased their share of page views relative to competitive sites by 68 percent, and time spent by 66 percent. More importantly, among those exposed to both the search and display ads, purchases of the advertiser’s products and services increased by 244 percent online and 89 percent offline compared to online users with similar behavior who were not exposed to these ads.

Office Live Gets a Thumbs Up

I have several friends, in addition to myself, who are now operating small businesses. It’s very interesting to compare our challenges and see where they intersect — mostly around time shortages.

I just got some “comps” (in pdf) from one of those friends who’s trying to set up a site for his accupuncture and alternative medicine practice. Previously I laid out a long laundry list for him of all the free SME marketing opportunities online.

The design comps he showed me were terrible and my friend was complaining about how much time the process was taking. I had told him about my own aborted experience and we commiserated.

On a related note, I came across a rather long piece by the NY Times’ David Pogue who gives a thorough review of the website building tools and related applications on Microsoft’s Office Live product. He has several minor criticisms but on the whole is very bullish on the product:

It’s a sweet suite (Internet Explorer for Windows required) that every small-business owner should investigate — quick, before somebody else snaps up the dot-com name you want.

The free Web site is the crown jewel, but there’s more to it than that. The free plan, known as Office Live Basics, also offers you 25 matching e-mail accounts (sales@caseycorp, litigation@caseycorp, and so on). You get a password-protected online calendar, too, and even free tech support by e-mail.

The Basics plan shakes up the status quo in another way, too, thanks to a free service called AdManager, now in beta testing. It lets even novices get into search-engine advertising — you know, so that your ads pop up when people use Google or Yahoo to search for something.

AdManager lets you specify a budget, say $100 a month, and walks you through deciding which search terms (keywords) will bring up your ad. At the moment, you can place ads only on Microsoft’s own search sites, MSN Search and Live.com. Microsoft says, however, that it is working with Google, Yahoo and other search sites, which it will add to the options soon after the introduction.

Note the discussion re AdManager and its simplified tools, also shared by Google and Yahoo!’s Panama. I have yet to investigate with the good folks in Redmond but will do so.

AdManager, as well as Google’s Starter Edition and Panama’s simplification, again raises the question of whether the SME market will see meaningful adoption of online marketing on a “pull” basis. There are plenty of voices out there who think it now and forever will be a “push” market.

Where do you come down?

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Here’s CNET’s video review and demo of Office Live.

Ingenio Announces Deal with Microsoft for Mobile

Ingenio announced a major distribution relationship with Microsoft. The deal right now is exclusively about Windows Live for mobile but it may extend in the future more broadly to online. Ingenio, however, declined to comment on that possibility. 

When users perform geotargeted searches on Windows Live for mobile they will see Ingenio PPCall advertisers if Ingenio has a relevant listing to serve. If not, there will be no ads shown.

Google and Yahoo! have started serving sponsored listings on their mobile products (not PPCall listings). PPCall, however, is a natural fit for mobile and in some ways more so than on the Internet.

Here’s more from my slightly longer post on Search Engine Watch.

Ingenio’s Marc Barach on PPCall

iMedia features an article on PPCall by Ingenio CMO Marc Barach with some case-study information. For those already familiar with PPCall, there are no revelations. It’s basically an overview with some interesting detail.

Yahoo! Beta Tests PPC Ads in Mobile

Yahoo is launching (in beta) paid-search ads in mobile in the U.S. and expanding its test program in the U.K. Only a “select group of advertisers” are initially included (it’s not clear what the criteria are). But the number of advertisers will expand over time as the program rolls out.

According to the press release, “consumers will be able to click on the sponsored search results to go to the advertisers’ mobile web site or a landing page to get more information about the advertisers’ offerings, including the ability to call the advertiser.”

Yahoo had already been running tests of mobile PPC ads in the U.K. and Japan.

Read the rest of this post on SEW.

Ads on Google Mobile

Barry Schwartz at SEW reports on Google launching mobile ads in the US, UK and Germany (this was previously tested in Japan.):

The ads are being tested in U.S., U.K. and in Germany and are priced similar to how normal AdWords ads are priced, based on auction. Google has a whole help section for Mobile Ads here. It explains what the ads look like; “Mobile ads contain two lines of text, with a limit of 12 or 18 characters per line, depending on the language in which you write your ad. Your destination URL appears on a third line if you choose to enter one.

Google has applied a for a PPCall mobile patent but this doesn’t seem to be tied into that. There’s more information here.

Given the consumer appetite for local information in a mobile environment, this will be valuable inventory for geotargeting advertisers.

Local Realtors Buy Print — Reluctantly

Peter Zollman’s research firm Classified Intelligence just conducted an in-depth survey of realtors about their advertising spending and attitudes toward print and online media. The findings are reported in some depth in this article. Here are some of the highlights:

Realtor newspaper advertising

• 36% of surveyed realtors spent 10% or less of their total budgets in their local newspapers. 19% spent less than 20% of their total budgets on newspaper print ads. And 17% didn’t advertise at all in print newspapers
• 52% of survey respondents reported promoting their services on free classified sites such as Craigslist (67%) Google Base (45%) and MSN/Windows Live Expo (33%)
• 61% of respondents said the weren’t spending any marketing dollars on newspaper websites

Realtor ad budgets

• 58% of agents surveyed said they were spending more on advertising in 2006 than in 2005, while 34% were spending about the same and only 8% said they were spending less
• The majority of realtors were spending $1,000 to $10,000 annually on advertising: yard signs, billboards, flyers, print, the Internet and websites
• 33% said they spend more than $10,000, while 26% spend between $5,000 and $10,000; 33% spent between $1,000 and $5,000 and 9% spent less than $1,000

Most spending on websites

According to the survey findings, 67% of realtors spent up to 30% of their ad budgets on maintaining their websites.

Local search lags

Only 26% of realtors spent anything on local PPC. 58% reported spending nothing on local search advertising (one question is how is that defined in the survey?). This finding appears to contradict earlier Borrell findings that local realtors were some of the most aggressive of local search advertisers. (The findings may not in fact be contradictory but it’s hard to tell at this level.)

Classified Intelligence’s Jim Townsend reported, according to the article, that “realtors are spending more money on advertising, but they’re not particularly satisfied with any advertising options.”

Marketing ‘purgatory’

Townsend’s remark is a perfect statement of the “purgatory” that now grips the local market. Local businesses cannot abandon expensive traditional media – because they’re still working but also because the alternative is a kind of confusing mess. The same situation confronts print yellow pages advertisers. Indeed, there’s plenty of anecdotal evidence that many local advertisers are eager to find alternatives to print yellow pages. But it still works and clear, easy-to-adopt alternatives have yet to emerge.

Google Checkout (Late Posting)

I was on a short two-day vacation (more on that later) when Google Checkout was released last week. Lots has already been written and said and much remains to be seen. But I believe, like most Google initiatives these days, it’s not about any single objective — Google is always trying to kill more than one bird.

So what is Google Checkout ultimately about? It’s about rewarding current AdWords advertisers and attracting new ones. It’s about building stronger and deeper relationships with merchants and, especially, consumers. It’s also potentially about new revenues (we’ll see). And, assuming Google is to be believed, it’s NOT about using consumer purchase data to tailor search results or to market to consumers in other ways. It’s also apparently not tied into Google Analytics.

As Om Malik points out, it may be also about anticipated future migration to a CPA model. (I think CPA is on the menu as an intended “advertising” option, but not thought of as a PPC replacement at Google). Early last year I asked whether click fraud would accelerate the further development and mainstreaming of alternatives to PPC (they’ve always existed of course). Now we are seeing several developments that suggest that some of these other models will gain popularity and take hold.

My comment to many of the reporters with whom I spoke last week was that the key for Google is to establish trust and build consumer acceptance and adoption right out of the gate. I think the entire system hinges directly on this. And part of that will be marketing and promotion of the system — something that Google has been loathe to do with any sustained focus for any of its recently introduced products.

This Business Week article is highly critical of Google’s non-search initiatives and uses Hitwise data to argue that they’re mostly flops. Here’s an interesting statement from the article attributed to Marissa Mayer of Google:

[U]p to 60% to 80% of Google’s products may eventually crash and burn. But the idea, she says, is to encourage risk-taking and let surviving products truly thrive. “We anticipate that we’re going to throw out a lot of products,” says Mayer. “But [people] will remember the ones that really matter and the ones that have a lot of user potential.”

From what little I know of the company’s culture, this statement reflects a quasi-Darwinian ethos prevalent at Google. I’m using informed speculation when I say that behind their non-promotion of products is something like a “survival of the fittest” notion. The products that are good will find their audience and survive (or stick on the refrigerator), while others (60% to 80% according to Google’s Mayer) will fail (or fall to the floor).

If I’m right about that assumption regarding the “Darwinian” philosophy – remember the template is Google search, which grew and thrived without any marketing — it’s an element of the culture that may need to change.

If Google really wants consumers and merchants to use Checkout, it probably will have to do some good old fashioned marketing or at least consistent promotion on Google.com. Without that, Checkout may not get the notice and potential adoption it otherwise would — and could wind up falling into that 60% to 80% abyss.

But I think there’s too much at stake here to throw the baby into the pool and see if it can swim on its own.

Tracking the Role of Search in the Buying Cycle

Yahoo! has done a bunch of pioneering work and research on how search and paid search influence consumer purchase behavior. I have for months intended to write more about this (and will I promise :)). Now SEM firm 360i has done some extensive and interesting work on tracking consumer behavior and the relationship of branded and non-branded search terms and conversion rates.

One of the takeaways from the report is that it takes multiple clicks to convert a large percentage of consumers. This is consistent with comScore research for Google this past holiday season that showed an average of 65 searches across categories before transactions were actually consummated.

The findings are in the context of e-commerce and the report doesn't get into offline/local transactions, but the user behavior is probably quite similar except the "conversion" is local. Yahoo's work gets into the offline implications of online consumer behavior quite extensively. And remember, e-commerce is only about 3% of US retail.

Chris Sherman has a write-up of the research here. And you can read the press release here.

Yahoo! + eBay Alliance Confirmed

I was on a plane all day yesterday so I’m a little slow getting to this. Garrett French notified me (via Reuters) that a “multi-year alliance” has been inked:

Under the deal, Yahoo will be the exclusive third-party provider of all graphic ads throughout eBay’s auction site. Yahoo has also chosen EBay’s online payment system PayPal to allow its own customers to pay for Yahoo Web services.

In addition, Yahoo Web search features will be integrated into a co-branded version of the eBay toolbar, and the companies said they would explore developing “click-to-call” ad technologies on their respective Web sites.

“Click-to-call” provides a link inside an advertisement that allows consumers to directly call the advertiser to pursue a transaction.

Under the pact, which gives Yahoo access to eBay’s vast base of online shoppers, the companies will begin to roll out their joint initiatives this year.

At its essence, this is more distribution for Yahoo! graphical ads, more non-Google traffic to eBay auctions and some very modest consumer traffic to Yahoo! search via the eBay toolbar. This is a bit of the old “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” However, the two companies are complementary and it should represent an incremental boost in revenues for both companies and should open the door for some interesting opportunities — I’m thinking the acceleration of presence/click to call/PPCall. But we’ll see.

More interesting in a way to speculate about is whether this is a prelude to something bigger down the line. That’s not necessarily implied by this “alliance,” such things happen all the time, but . . .

More later.

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Barry Schwartz has some more detail and links to other coverage. Here’s coverage from Google News. Here’s the WSJ coverage (sub. req’d). Finally, some data/traffic analysis on the potential impact of the deal from Hitwise.

Google ‘BaseWords’: SME Testing Ground?

Google AdWords was "built" by small businesses, but there are millions and millions more in the US and abroad that Google would like to introduce to AdWords without building a sales force to knock on doors. (Yellow pages publishers are doing that for them.)

I saw this last week but Barry Schwartz just posted something that reminded me to write about this. He points to Google Base now being an entry point for AdWords, with geotargeting and pricing being essentially "automatic." (You can probably already see where I'm going with this.) The interfaces are pretty straightforward and “services,” where well over 75% of US small businesses reside, are already part of the menus in Base.

Jonathan Rosenberg, Google's product SVP, spoke at Google Press Day about the "tail" consisting of small business advertisers, who are an important market for Google. He also talked about Google AdWords "Starter Edition" as being tailored to new advertisers and specifically small businesses. Starter edition is simpler but still doesn't address many of the objections/obstacles to small business adoption of the “traditional” AdWords product. But this new development with Base potentially does.

Let's put aside that it's not visible to most would-be advertisers. At least conceptually this is a much simpler approach for SMEs. Also putting aside the "trust us" dimension of this new "BaseWords" offering, I'm sure that it points the way to a future, segmented approach (Starter Edition is an example of that) to the market. What that segmentation ultimately looks like remains to be seen.

But Base-ically (sorry) it looks like this: SMEs provide creative, categorization and a weekly or monthly budget and Google does the rest including geotargeting; more experienced SMEs or those who want greater control over their advertising will be pointed to Starter Edition; and those who want to run multiple campaigns and want the most control will be directed toward Standard Edition.

Without having spoken to anyone at Google, I’m sure the company has AdWords simplification in mind for SMEs in introducing this new BaseWords offering.