Something To This “What Would Google Do?” Thing…
Posted by Dan Sachar on February 13, 2009
I hate to hock a book that’s already being hocked everywhere, but it struck me while reading Greg’s post on the issue of “free,” that there may be something to Jeff Jarvis’ new thesis. Greg wrote about Skyblox and its free wi-fi model:
One intriguing example I recently heard about is Skyblox, which works with merchants in a neighborhood to offer free wi-fi to the merchants’ customers, then creates a portal that hotspot users have to go through featuring targeted local advertising. I don’t know enough about the business to say whether it’s going to work, but from a stakeholder perspective, they’re definitely taking the right approach. Customers get free wi-fi and relevant, targeted information about their neighborhood. Merchants get an advertising vehicle that outperforms ads in local alt-weeklies (which is what most of them have been relying on to date). Even indirect stakeholders benefit — by creating a local portal, Skyblox provides a collective good for the neighborhood.
So they create a product that benefits consumers, advertisers and themselves all at once. Where have we heard that before?
It’s the Google model for search advertising. By delivering relevant ads to people as they search on a word, they are giving the consumers a benefit. By putting the advertiser in front of a consumer searching for something close to their product, it delivers the advertisers a benefit. By putting the consumer and advertiser on the same “page,” so to speak, they increase the likelihood of a click-through, giving Google a benefit.
Maybe there is something to asking yourself “what would google do?” after all?
Jeff Jarvis said
You’re right. The most-hocked biz phrase ever is “win-win” but that’s the essence of succeeding in an open world: not controlling (as a cable company would) but enabling.
(And I’ll take all the hocking I can get. Thanks.)