Gmail: Better than spam?
ClickZ reports that an interesting side effect of Google's new ad-supported email application, Gmail, are contextual ads from competitors. "Because the contextual ads are targeted based on e-mail message content, as determined by Google's technology, commercial messages are the ones most likely to trigger ads. That's because they're most likely to contain commercial product or brand names, for which Google's AdWords advertisers frequently buy keywords," writes ClickZ's Pamela Parker.
A recent newsletter from fashion vendor Neiman Marcus, for example, triggered ads with the headlines "Kate Spade Handbags," "Ferragamo at Neoluxury" and "Prada Handbags." Listings were for BizRate.com, Neoluxury.com and FinestDesigners.com, respectively. Interestingly, all of these must have been triggered purely by the subject line -- "Salvatore Ferragamo: Shop the spring collection of shoes, handbags, and more" -- since the email content was in the form of pictures, "none of which display by default in the Gmail client," says ClickZ. What's more, in a default view in Gmail, a reader would only see the competitors' ads unless they selected to display external images.
The ClickZ article -- itself entitled "Gmail: The Next Gator?" -- suggests the situation is "akin to the kind of competitive pop-up ads that have generated controversy (and legal action) for Claria, the renamed company that fires its own ads to users, blotting out those designed to be there by a website's creator.
What's interesting here is that, tied in with Google's recent decision to allow advertisers to bid on trademarked keywords they don't own, you could see "a message from Banana Republic (for example), simply because of its subject line, trigger ads from J. Crew, Eddie Bauer and the like".
I haven't mulled over all the consequences of this, but I don't see it as exactly similar to Gator. An email newsletter is not facing the obliteration or alteration of its message, design and website integrity in the same way a Gatored website is. But I can see a couple of other possible outcomes:
- Google's Gmail suddenly makes a whole lot more commercial sense. Marketers can reach into your inbox more effectively than any spammer. If I sold Gucci handbags, for example, all I have to do is buy ads for every competing brand of fashion handbag and I could be sure that my ads would reach every Gmail account holder interested in the subject, because they're bound at some point to write about it in an email, or receive an email on it, either from a friend or a supplier;
- I would imagine this would prod marketing newsletters to move to RSS quite quickly. There they can be a little more confident, for now, that their 'message' is not diluted by by contextual ads.
I think this will be more relevant than the discussion about privacy. End users might be quite happy to get contextual ads alongside their handbag newsletter. But they might be more alarmed if they see contextual ads for psychiatric help if they get an email from a friend describing how they went 'crazy' on Saturday night, or, more seriously, ads for cancer treatment if they discuss how a family member is coping with his prostate. When does contextual advertising go beyond 'well targeted' to become 'scarily intrusive'?
