Google has launched a big new charm offensive at ad agencies, and they are understandably suspicious -- like any fly would be looking at Google's dominant advertising web.
The New York Times has an excellent and humorous article on just how wary ad agencies are of Google -- "Googling in Person to Make Friends."
- Reporter Stephanie Clifford concluded her opening paragraph with a precious and comical capture of the real "spider and the fly" dynamic at work here...
- The Googlers "emphasized a single message: Google is a friend to ad agencies.
- No, really."
Let me use Google's new translation software to translate the 'Googlish' language used in this fun article into english.
""We understand that maybe we haven't been the best partner over the years" said Erin Clift, the director of agency relations at Google."
- Translation: "We treated ad agencies like they were roadkill, and technology trogolodytes until it dawned on us that Google could grow much faster if we tricked ad agencies into 'sharing' their lifeblood with us -- as partners!"
“We essentially take Google — our people, our products, our food, our tchotchkes — roll into the lobbies and give people the chance to interact with Google,” Ms. Clift said. The events are “a fantastic way to ingratiate ourselves,” she said.
- Translation: "Flys are attracted to food. If we can sucker them with the aroma and sight of free food we can get them to fly towards us and then capture them in our web."
"Penry Price, Google’s vice president for advertising sales for North America, dismissed this view, saying Google had no desire to replace agencies or to take their clients."
- Translation: "'Replace' and 'take' are such harsh words, we just want to 'automate' ad agencies and 'suck the value of their relationships' from them... come on... they are our 'valued partners'..."
Bottom line: Google is peddling the nonsensical notion that in the collaborative opentopia of Web 2.0 the fly will lie down with the spider... and live in harmony with one another...
Absurd! Ad agencies should be afraid, very afraid... of Google's capability and ambitions to rapidly disintermediate them and make them irretrievably dependent on Google's advertising technology platform.
- Google considers ad agencies as quaint anachronisms that Google can quickly automate with Google's algorithms and computing cloud, and ultimately replace with Google's ever-expanding technology-savvy ad-sales force.
