As I walking up to do my speech on blogging at the last Affiliate Summit event in Vegas, a gentleman got out of his chair and stopped me to say hello. He introduced himself as a product manager from Google, gave me his card, and told me he was looking forward to hearing this presentation in particular.
How’s that for pressure?
Turns out, we communicated after the show and he agreed with my ideas and like my presentation. Looking back at the moment, and seeing all the news the last few days about Google’s move into the affiliate marketing space, you just have to wonder…
(insert dream sequence dreamy music clip here)
Was Google scouting the Affiliate Summit in preparation for this move?
How long will it be before the Affiliate Summit event is the size of Ad-Tech with a Google booth bigger than the dining area?
Can Google harness the essence of affiliate marketing on a grand scale and make it work?
Will Google buy the Affiliate Summit from Shawn and take it global? Will Shawn let them?
Will Google try to use their power to rename the term affiliate marketing into something more, well, better?
(end dreamy dream music)
I’m excited about Google’s push into the affiliate marketing industry, if only to see how and if they can make it work on a mass scale, and to see some of the answers to those questions.
Feel free to leave your answers and thoughts in the comments below. I know Shawn will be here soon to deny that he’ll sell to Google, but c’mon Shawn, everyone has a price. :)
If that’s even happening, then Google is just like Microsoft, trying to monopolize the entire internet advertising/marketing space and web is just too big for just one player.
Having one voice to decide what’s considered good or bad leaves people without a choice to make their own decisions. They just have to follow the market leader, and surely, we wouldn’t want that.
Jim,
From what I am seeing google isn’t quite eating CJ and linkshare alive, they are not even entering what “mainstream affiliate marketing” is. They are just a BETA CPA network who will eventually let people who have never been affiliates become affiliates. For the “supers”, I don’t see google ever becoming major option, maybe a part of the mix, but that’s what Google will ever become – They are not monopolizing anything, the way google is looking at it is to create a market for CPA in the places it hasn’t reached yet.
I just heard from my Google contact who read this blog entry. He offered no insight (of course), but at least we can be sure that Google is monitoring these conversations. Believe me, they are.
> Will Google buy the Affiliate Summit from Shawn and take it global? Will Shawn let them?
We’re already going global this year – London in September. ;-)
Hey Sergey – give me a call. We can catch up on our undergrad days at U of MD.