DISQUS

Savorydish · 1 month ago

Don't really see how this is an alternative to advertising. If nothing else, it encourages consumers to spend more. And it should encourage advertisers to get their branding messages out there, so that when consumers do conduct a search they are more likely to look out for your brand.

peterk4773 · 1 month ago

ya I can see how this really establishes a brand identity. where's that sarcasm font when ya need it

no name · 1 month ago

And how exactly does that kill advertising? More likely to kill the in-store sales associate. Not sure what this has anything to do with branding, it's just another way to purchase.

TheFounder · 1 month ago

@no name

One day someone needs to do a study on how Wikipdia was branded by SEO and not an ad agency.... and then go on to report how it buried Encarta...

no name · 1 month ago

@TheFounder

I agree...but I think that's the same point I'm making. See I don't care if advertising dies, I'm sure we'd all be fine.

The problem is most advertising people forget that advertising is usually part of a larger marketing platform. This looks like a new way to place product and possibly give customer support. But what happens if your product doesn't sell well through this platform? Or you come out with a new product and can't get it high enough on the search results? (lets face it, every year there's going to be a larger cache of products, much larger than you could find in any physical store).

Essentially we confuse advertising with being a consumer need. It's not, and hasn't been for a loooooong time. No, it's a business need. And businesses won't stop having the need to sell product, increase market share and pleasing their stock holders for a long long time. Advertising will take on different forms for sure. It might not look the same. But it's not going away.

starbooty · 1 month ago

i tihnk it's funny that you felt the need to add this sentence: "It's trackable with Google Analytics, meaning retailers can stay up on which products are, say, getting traffic but not sales."

if you work in advertising you had better know what google analytics does. seriously.

DB7 · 1 month ago

Looks like a bag of same old shite to me - nothing revolutionary and functionality that a lot of ecommerce site have already built through custom means.

FFN · 1 month ago

And what happens when you want to convince someone to buy your product instead?

Oh yeah, you need advertising.

Can we stop with the fucking 'death of advertising' already? This shit comes up every 10 years and things change. But advertising is still here.

MetroplexInteractive · 1 month ago

So not exactly sure where Google Products was getting their info from - but definitely support having Google scour product pages. Many retailers though are ill-prepared for this - particularly with site structure - since most product page URL's are constructed based on the product number and not product name or description (just one of many examples of how most retailers don't think in terms of SEO.) http://www.metroplexinteractive.com