Below is live coverage of the Keynote with Susan Wojcicki, SVP Advertising, Google, Inc. panel from the SMX West conference. This coverage is provided by Barry Schwartz of RustyBrick.
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Barry Schwartz:
8:54:39 am
Starting soon... about 5 minutes
Barry Schwartz:
8:57:02 am
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8:57:07 am
They are doing last minute prepping
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8:57:32 am
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8:58:04 am
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8:59:12 am
Greg Sterling it attempting to unlive blog at http://searchengineland.com/live-blogging-the-google-susan-wojcicki-smx-west-keynote-113308 as I show him how real live blogging works
Barry Schwartz:
8:59:30 am
They take their seats
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9:00:22 am
Susan on Google+ https://plus.google.com/102923147893327767382/posts
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9:00:52 am
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Chris Sherman introduces her
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Forbes ranked her the #16th most influential people
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9:03:15 am
Google's founders started in her Garage
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9:04:04 am
Chris is now showing off the influential garages from HP, to Amazon to Walk Disney...
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9:04:55 am
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How did you get these guys working in your garage and did you have any sense what it would become?
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The homes in this area are very expensive
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9:06:12 am
She just got her MBA, bought a house but had to rent the garage to pay the mortgage
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9:06:26 am
At the time, she had no idea what the company would become
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9:06:49 am
At the time, there were many search engines but when she started using the product, she knew it was special.
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9:07:21 am
She had her ah-ha moment when the stanford servers went offline and Google stopped working and she couldn't get her work done.
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9:07:41 am
She worked at Intel while they were in her garage but when they moved out, she joined them.
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9:08:01 am
They were not allowed through the front door then but now they are.
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9:08:58 am
In 2003/2004 you launched AdSense and lots have changed since then, how has things changed since then?
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9:09:45 am
AdSense was a simple product in 2003, it had contextual targeting and you can opt in or out of it. Now it is a lot more complex, with audience controls, site opt out, target sites, etc etc etc
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9:10:11 am
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9:10:39 am
It has evolved that it is not just a network but now you can buy on exchanges and then 3rd party exchanges. I had no idea how complex it would get.
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9:12:01 am
Chris: How are you working with privacy controls and the flake in the media and govt
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9:12:49 am
Susan: We did not have a cookie on AdSense network until they acquired DoubleClick in 2008
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9:12:58 am
But they did this in a very transparent way
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9:13:08 am
With controls to turn on or off
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Of the people who use these controls, the same number of people who opt out, people actually add more preferences to their control panel.
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9:14:17 am
See http://www.google.com/ads/preferences
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As people come on to this page, they see what they see, they can opt out and add things and they see users say no, we are comfortable with it.
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9:16:10 am
Chris: How do you balance the perceptions of what the outside world thinks you are doing something bad for the users and so on...
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9:17:04 am
Susan: We are a leader in the space and we are doing that. As you introduce any new technology, there are going to be questions and concerns. So we try to notify as much as they can, and be clear about those changes. Susan said she got at least 20 notifications.
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9:17:42 am
At the end of the day, there is change, this is new and people have to digest it.
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9:18:35 am
Danny: I look at this and it seems like you can't win. Like when you said you would reduce the data retention to 18 months. People said why so long... So seems like you can't win.
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9:19:11 am
Danny: Why is this concern not happening with other companies. What is your take on this?
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9:19:28 am
Susan: It is hard to comment on why a regulator would focus on us vs other providers.
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9:20:12 am
Susan: When we talk about the privacy policy and the changes we have, people do not understand that the only thing we are changing is the policy privacy. Nothing is changing tomorrow. As we make changes, we will notify people.
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9:21:17 am
Susan : For example, when you get an invite for a party, maps will show up in the email through Google Maps. This is good for the user. The more we understand users, the better we can serve them.
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9:21:46 am
Chris: You've been very influential in building. What is your take on acquisitions vs building things. What is the balance...
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9:22:07 am
Susan: I've been involved in a number, the largest were YouTube and Double Click... Also Admob, etc.
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9:23:27 am
Susan: Google is a technology company, we like to build things. We buy vs build, when we think we can't get something they have already. YouTube had users. AdMob brought them a team of mobile ad specialists with a user base already.
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9:23:41 am
Susan:So far, those acquisitions have been good, I think≥
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9:24:06 am
Susan: there is also a lot of people dynamics going into this as well...
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9:24:37 am
Danny: Google+ integration, lets talk about the Safari issue. Should you have gone around Safari's security thing to make Google+ buttons work? Was that Googley...
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9:25:39 am
Susan: As soon as we became aware of it, the company went into alert and fixed it asap. I think that is one thing, we try to acknowledge mistakes and fix them.
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9:26:05 am
Susan: We do ask Google+ users to opt into it. So also if they opt out on Safari but opt in on Google+, how does that work?
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9:26:50 am
Chris: We had a session yesterday on Retargeting (Remarketing) There is a creep factor of "you are following me around" - how do you manage that, creepy vs qualified ads.
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9:27:11 am
Susan: I was remarketed for this conference, you guys used it for this conference.
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9:27:28 am
(yes, her face was all over SMX ads on all these blogs with AdSense everywhere)
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9:28:04 am
Susan: Everything is a balance at the end of the day. USers want useful and relevant things. We need to make sure users are comfortable with it, through transparency and options.
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9:28:31 am
Danny: Obama Privacy and Do Not Track thing... Can you talk about that?
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9:29:48 am
Susan: I was there last week for that. It is an industry initiative... It gave consistent notifications and controls to users about what is going on and Chrome will adopt it. Users will have the ability to opt out. There is still certain info we need to retain for spam and fraud, stuff for the internet to continue to work.
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9:30:35 am
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Chris: Google is moving into social in a big way - Google+. That has implications for both users but also advertisers. How are advertising reacting to it?
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Susan: The first step is for marketers should have Google+ pages.
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9:32:48 am
Susan: So how do we make those more relevant and they have been integrating them into SERPs. But marketers have to keep them fresh. But some marketers have been using it in interesting way, such as hangouts for support. We also enabled ads to be +1ed, friends show up, etc. The idea is ads work just like content.
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9:34:01 am
Danny: What does it mean for Google to have a social network? What do you hope to get from Google+?
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9:35:09 am
Susan: The company's view on this, is this is the next generation of Google products. We know, our users are logged in and they are telling us stuff. Because of this, we can customize the results more from them. Yes, Google+ is a social network, but it also gives us an opportunity to know more about the users and give them content more relevant to them.
Barry Schwartz:
9:35:34 am
(so it seems like Susan is saying Google+ is important to Google because it helps with search)
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9:36:04 am
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9:36:21 am
Susan: because it is early, people don't understand that but that is the future.
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Chris: Where you going with mobile and where is the future?
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9:37:05 am
Susan: Mobile has been such a huge, interesting and important change.
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9:37:33 am
Susan: Sometimes when something this big happens, we don't notice, because we can't live without it. Can you imagine living with out your mobile phone?
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9:37:47 am
Susan: A lot of web sites do not have mobile landing pages.
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9:38:05 am
Susan: Once we have mobile landing pages, how do we incorporate mobile signals like location, touch, etc.
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9:38:43 am
Mobile is here...
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9:40:19 am
Susan: Click to call has been going well. "It's been good." Marketers and advertisers like the call leads. Google will continue to invest in that.
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9:42:26 am
Susan: There was a change in CPC this past quarter and it surprised some investors. There is an increase in paid clicks with a decrease in CPC.
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9:42:45 am
Susan: When we make changes, sometimes they go more to paid clicks vs CPC and so on.
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9:43:22 am
Chris: Your father is a professor and your mother is a school teacher. How did you combine your family life into what you are doing now?
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9:44:14 am
Susan: I grew up on the stanford campus. Growing up on the campus gave me an appreciation for knowledge.
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9:44:50 am
Susan: Even though many of the professors can go to industry and make a lot more money they stay in pursuit of knowledge instead of money. And Google is a lot like that she said.
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9:45:46 am
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9:45:56 am
So she is following that tradition by being at Google
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9:46:03 am
Q&A time from audience...
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9:46:33 am
Q: How do you balance new features vs maintaining the product with ongoing fixes, etc.?
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A: We spend a lot of time thinking about this. Our goal is to do both. We are thinking a lot now about how things are changing now (i.e. mobile, display, mobile display, many new features). So now we are thinking about how we can go back and make it easier to use within our console.
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9:49:18 am
Susan: We want our engineers to fully understand how agencies think and use the product.
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Q: More and more ads in the way... Why?
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9:51:19 am
A: We haven't added more ads, but we did change how some ads display and some do take up more space. It is a challenge, if people are looking for commercial info, a lot of time, the ads are more useful.
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9:52:45 am
Q: The industry in a whole has a negative view towards advertising. Is this an issue for Google?
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9:53:10 am
Susan: Yea, I think it is an issue. It is part of the challenge and opportunity. Ads are usually just information. So how do you show the right ad at the right time?
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9:53:32 am
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9:53:53 am
Susan: So that is our goal, if we are successul, there will be a lot less negativity towards ads.
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9:54:15 am
Dany: The superbowl, we turn in just for the ads...
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9:54:29 am
Susan: The is the challenge...
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9:55:07 am
Danny: Can we get a all ads page in Google?
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9:55:14 am
Susan: That is what the yellow pages is about.
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9:55:36 am
Susan: There is a lot of opportunity here and that is the future.
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9:55:49 am
Danny: What is the biggest thing to come in the next few years?
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9:56:01 am
Susan: So many things, the industry moves really fast. In general?
Barry Schwartz:
9:57:19 am
Susan: My most amazing ad experience ever. I have a daughter who wanted to take chinese. So she calls her friends and got a name. After she came back, she checked her email, and the ad in her gmail account was an ad for that teachers name. That was perfect ad experience.
Barry Schwartz:
9:57:50 am
That is all... Next sessions in 45 minutes...
Barry Schwartz:
9:57:52 am
10:45am-Noon
SEO For Google+ & Google Search by Barry Schwartz
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SEO For Google+ & Google Search by Barry Schwartz
Real Answers For Technical SEO Problems by Avi Wilensky
