How Will We Search?

This week the US won its antitrust lawsuit against Google for Google’s dominance in search engine marketing.

The government says Google created an unfair marketplace for paid search, leading to a virtual monopoly and corresponding  inflated costs. Google says its search is the best and most responsive to consumer needs, which has led to its dominance.

Both are right. Sort of.

While we are all about creating economical efficiencies for marketers and the businesses they represent, if the government does break up search, buying search will become a logistical nightmare. The process of optimizing paid search campaigns, given Google’s want to alter algorithms, is already an exercise of continuous mental gymnastics. And that’s one platform, one search engine. The gymnastics is worth it because you know you’re bidding against competitors in a single marketplace.

Imagine what will happen with optimizing campaigns in multiple SEM marketplaces, with multiple ad-tech managers and multiple walled garden algorithms.

Small businesses lose. Large businesses potentially gain topline reach, but at an expense to monitor all that.

There’s an opportunity here for someone to create an SA360 competitor.

And there an opportunity for an attribution and planning tool that is not dependent on cookies and measures across walled gardens. Oh, wait. #FutureSight.online™