I’m sure such an announcement is imminent within the next year or two. Sure Google has Adwords and Adsense, but that’s nothing compared to what they’ll be ultimately be able to do. Anyone who has played around with the Trends feature in Google Reader knows what I’m talking about. As an RSS reader, Google Reader has an enormous portion of the market – and it’s growing. For example, at last check 38% of Andy Beard’s traffic was via Google Reader. For LeveragingIdeas it’s more like 55%.
As blogs become a more credible and socially accepted means of journalism, traffics to the big hit blogs as well as those with niche content (and this audiences will continue to rise). Here are just a few examples of what Google Ad Network would knows about me…consider what you as a media buyer might be willing to pay for such knowledge:
Google knows what blogs I read, but it also knows….
- What keywords I personally ‘tag’ blogs with. For example, I tag blogs with particular desires and insights such as ‘competition’ or ‘gift ideas’
- Google knows what blogs and posts are REALLY the most viral. It knows when particular items are shared, emailed
- Eventually Google could recognize when I include a given blog post’s hyperlink in an email sent through Gmail. Plus, it could scan the email’s content for keywords…and recipients
- Google knows the frequency of how often I read particular types of information as well as the consumption patterns that could ultimately lead me to transactions. Hmm…I don’t recall ever buying something online before 12pm…
- Thanks to the ‘share’ feature, Google increasingly knows who the real influencers are in a given social graph
What else does Google know?