In a world of instant everything, food, phone, news and stock price changes, one would think that in a marketing or public relations crisis, a company or competitor would use any media at their disposal to strategically position themselves and leverage their product in a media storm. As an example, let’s look at Toyota. In the news now for weeks owing to an issue with their brake pedals, floor mats and now maybe even their automotive computer systems. Toyota reacted slowly and the media has been relentless. Consequently in January, Ford and Chevy both outsold Toyota, while Toyota sales dropped 16% (Reuters, Feb 2 2010).

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This post was written by Chris Copeland, CEO, GroupM Search – The Americas, and published in MediaPost’s Search Insider, Friday, February 5, 2010

This weekend, the Colts and Saints will battle to determine the king of the football hill during Super Bowl XLIV. A month into 2010, there are battle lines across the search landscape that also bear watching. These battles will shape the devices, platforms and consumer experience for this year and many to come. Here’s your quick primer of the battles, the stakes and what to watch for to determine who has the upper hand.

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I was reading a post by Sarah Tillitt the other day regarding conquesting campaigns (search campaigns where companies buy the branded terms of competitors) and her entry struck a chord with me because conquesting campaigns and reputation management invariably come up during the course of any search marketer’s career.  It’s one of those sticky points where brands get really fired up about, but aren’t really sure how to respond to. I was fortunate enough where the first incident I had to handle had a three month window of time. This is most often not the case.  I was doing search for a very large pharmaceutical company whose patent for a flagship drug was coming to an end and they needed a search strategy to protect against the attack of the generics. 

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In a recent post, I covered what took place on Google’s press call for the Nexus One and how the device sizes up against the iPhone.  There has been plenty of talk around many smartphone releases and whether each one would be the iPhone killer.  This brings us to the natural question of what does great competition for Apple’s smartphone and smartphone wars at large mean for advertisers?  As marketers, we need to get that discussion going.

But before I jump into the implications of the smartphone war, let’s quickly recap life before the iPhone. 

The chart below shows us that search access from the mobile browser was pretty flat until the inception of the iPhone in June of 2007. And for the most part, it has been on a steady incline since.

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Potentially on the horizon, there could be digital “outdoor” ads available on Google Maps, as Google was recently granted a patent for placing virtual billboard ads in their Google Maps Street View. Inevitably, the Google vans that drove around recording routes for their Street View tool also captured billboards along the way. However, these ads become outdated over time, as they exist within Google Maps (Which leads to, oh heavens, no, wasted ad space?!).

The patent details how advertisers can update the billboard ad within Google Maps with a new ad, or that even, alternatively, a bidding system could be put in place for advertisers to bid for the ad spot on unclaimed properties. The patent also extends beyond billboards, mentioning other features such as “signs, posters and banners,” which could potentially mean any type of promotional features that are visible within a street view.

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