Ad Community to Google: 'Be More Responsive'

Google's sales organization requires minimal redirection or incremental staffing to meet the needs of marketers and agencies as the company prepares to expand its search engine advertising availabilities through non-contextual, cost-per-thousand-based graphical ads on partner sites. However, agency and advertiser executives have sent a cautionary yellow flag to the sales group, warning that the organization's services and support have been declining in competitive strength over the past several months.

Google ranks fifth among more than 60 websites evaluated by senior online media buyers, planners and advertisers in the annual Jack Myers Report Survey of Advertising Executives on Online Sales Organizations. A special report highlighting major findings from the study is being sent next week to subscribing sites, ad agencies, advertisers, media buying organizations and survey respondents. (See below for the Top 21 Online Sales Organizations.)

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However, while all indications for Google appear positive and Wall Street's response to their advertising announcement has been enthusiastic, Google was ranked only 21st among 61 online sales organizations for "sales representatives' accessibility and responsiveness" in the Myers survey, compared to 12th rank in the 2004 report. Organizations such as AOL's Advertising.com, which offers services not dissimilar to those being introduced by Google, ranked fifth for accessibility and responsiveness.

For "overall stewardship of schedule," a critical measure of performance for ad agencies who must reconcile purchased schedules with those actually delivered by sites, Google declined from seventh rank in the 2004 Myers Report to 18th overall in 2005.** By comparison, Yahoo! ranked fifth for stewardship, improving from eighth rank in 2004. Advertising.com ranked eleventh, up from 21st. Google's declining rank is not an issue of eroding service, but more a reflection of Google's static relationships with the advertising community while competitors significantly enhanced their services and capabilities.

Google's sales team is given credit by ad executives for having exceptional knowledge of their product and services and Google is ranked among the industry leaders with Weather.com and Yahoo! for "research insights and information" and "quality of presentations and support materials." Perceptions of Google's organization decline for "sales creativity and marketing support."

As previously reported in Jack Myers Report, Weather.com ranked first overall in the study, which evaluated seven performance categories. Yahoo! was the second best performing online sales organization, followed by the New York Times Digital and Marketwatch, which was under the CBS umbrella at the time the study was conducted and has since been acquired by The Wall Street Journal.

Google's sales staff met with more than 80 percent of advertiser and agency executives who have primary responsibility for online advertising and 70 percent of all agency and client executives who are engaged in online advertising decisions. Only Yahoo! ranked higher in sales penetration. While the average large television network sales organization has a sales staff of only 60 to 80 executives, leading online organizations including Google and Yahoo! have been staffed with as many as 250 sales executives.

The expansion of Google's advertising sales focus is a significant change from the search engine company's exclusive focus on contextual search. They will now allow advertisers to target ads in partner sites based on metrics other than relevant content. Google's Site Targeting program enables advertisers to target ads both by website and by content category. CPM bidding models have been advanced by Tacoda, Revenue Science, and Poindexter Systems, among others, with mixed results. Tacoda and Revenue Science are designed to enable site publishers to target ads within their sites based on the interests of site users, while Poindexter functions as an interest-based multi-site targeting tool for advertisers. These companies, along with DoubleClick, Avenue A and Yahoo!Search have all been developing multi-site networks for behavioral targeting initiatives.

The New York Times reported the Google service "comes as Yahoo! is preparing a significant expansion of its service to place ads on other websites and has been experimenting with graphical ads."

Jack Myers Report Research
Survey of Advertising Executives on Online Advertising Sales Organizations — 2005

* Rankings are based among 21 sales organizations that met with more than 20% of the respondent universe. A total of 61 website sales organizations were included in the study. The Overall Sales Organization Performance Power Rankings are based on each sales organization's rating in seven attribute categories: Sales Rep Knowledge of Product, Sales Rep Accessibility and Responsiveness, Overall Stewardship of Schedule, Research Insights and Information, Sales Creativity and Marketing Support, and Quality and Value of Presentations and Support Materials and Content Sponsorship Opportunities. Ratings are weighted based on the relative importance assigned to each attribute as well as the specific performance rating of each sales organization (a six or seven rating on a seven point scale). The index is based on performance in comparison to all 61 website sales organizations included in the study.

**Google rankings for "Accessibility & Responsiveness" and "Stewardship" are based on total survey respondents while the compiled rankings for all seven categories displayed above are based on respondents who spend 75% or more of their time on online advertising, and site rankings are limited to those sites that personally met with at least 20% of survey respondents.