Categories: Articles

The Google Story Or How 35 Characters Crushed Advertising

I have been listening to the audio version of the recently released book, The Google Story by David Vise and Mark Malseed. This is by no means an authorized book by Google and for anyone who has any knowledge of the interactive marketing space, there are some fairly pedantic snipes in there.
What the book does illustrate well is how the entire system of Google AdWords has put the advertising world on its side. In the age of interactivity and high speed connections where entrepreneurs are constantly struggling to bring high quality video broadcast to the Internet, the Google people are advertising’s king of the heap by offering a 23 character title and a two line (or 35 characters) description (this includes spaces).
It must be sending the Rich Media people back to their pixels.
So as high tech as we think we’re all being, Google found a billion dollar plus advertising industry in 35 characters including spaces.
Just to give you an idea of how much content you can fit into 35 characters including spaces, this whole sentence is: 116 characters with spaces.
When Seth Godin wrote about how Small Is The New Big or whenever great innovators talk about how simplicity is always the road to success, we don’t have to look much further than Google AdWords to see how true it is.
In listening to The Google Story, it is becomes abundantly clear that simplicity, passion and drive can topple any industry. Just take a look at Google AdWords.
As a point of reference, Google did not invent this type of advertising. GoTo (which then became Overture and more recently, Yahoo! Search Marketing) did have the first pay-per-click, text-based search results (which was based on an auction system). Yahoo! Search Marketing has claimed certain patent infringements and there was a court ruling. Much like Nike not being the first running shoe (but they were the first to say “Just Do It”), Google was not the first with this idea, they just made it work in a different way.

Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.