Marketecture: Get Smart. Fast.
00:40:49 · Ari Paparo
[00:40:49] S1: ahead. Yeah. So we don't talk about search that much on this show Nope. But I think this is worth it. So the search engine land reported that Google's market share went down a tiny bit. It's below 90% for the last three quarters of twenty twenty four, and you may be saying, well, poor Google 90%. That's just such a tough position to have them in. But I think this is this is interesting because for the past, like, I don't know, year, eighteen months, we've all been saying the same thing, which is AI is a massive threat to Google's core search business for... Because first of all, changes consumers' behavior. Second of all, changes the results that they they give answers instead of links, and that doesn't match with their ad revenue. And then thirdly, you may just have less clicks. The actual ads may be worth less. So there's a triple threat here, and Google is working their ass off with Gemini, etcetera. But we've had, like, anecdotally, you know, people in this sort of tech forward group, probably many of the listeners of this podcast, are using AI to replace search results. And we've all been kinda waiting to see if it was real or not or if it was just, like, the behavior of a tiny, tiny, meaningless elite. And so the results, they did not say where the search results were going. It actually went to the other category, which is kind of indicative that it might be AI. But, you know, every percentage of share that Google loses is, like, I don't know, a billion dollars in revenue or something like that. Just round numbers, Google makes, like, 300,000,000,000 in off search a year, I think. So 1% would be $3,000,000,000 less in ad revenue depending on the mix of which types of queries are being replaced. But it's... This is definitely a watch this space kind of news item.
00:42:35 · Eric Franchi
[00:42:35] S2: This is a very big deal. For every search that Google loses, they're losing the click, they're losing the data, they're losing the customer habit, and then they're losing the monetization opportunity. This is not like a triple like kind of loss. This is I mean, I don't know what the term for this is, but this is big. This is why like before, Tim, you asked me like where we would like to see more innovation. I mean, think about this one as an opportunity. Anecdotally, you know, I I, you know, tweeted about this to... X about this, to to you, Ari. You know, I I fashion myself as, like, trying to be better at DIY. And I used to just go to Google, do a search, end up on YouTube, have to sift through like YouTube videos to just find how to fix a little thing. Now ChatGPT, I just ask the question, it tells me what to do. I maybe lose the kind of janky video of the person holding their phone while they're trying to get something done, but it has been a habit change. And I don't know... No longer go to Google for this stuff. And I'm just like one meaningless elite amongst, I think, a growing subset.
00:43:43 · Ari Paparo, Eric Franchi, Tim Rowe
[00:43:43] S1: I I think that the the... We've replaced search results with answers, and that that change is not going back. There there is no going back to search results for many, many queries. Obviously, navigation queries, you still want kind of a URL. And Google can can become the answer engine. They're trying to. But first of all, there's a lot of risk to that. It's it's really hard to move to this new world. And secondly, the monetization is very unknown. So you're taking the the most profitable business maybe in the history of humanity, and it's being attacked on two dimensions simultaneously and very quickly. And, you know, that's a that's a real challenge for the team there. [00:44:27] S2: That said, a smart guy I know once said, never bet against Google. [00:44:31] S1: So Never bet against Google's stock price. You can bet against Google's individual performance, but the stock price just goes up no matter what. [00:44:39] S2: Yeah. Before we wrap, Tim. What does this mean for digital out of hold? [00:44:43] S3: That's that was a [00:44:44] S1: great question. Buy [00:44:45] S3: more buy more billboard. You know what? Here's what it means. That billboard on the side of the road that you pass every day going to and from work, nothing's changed about it. Buy more billboards. [00:44:56] S1: Is is there an AI is there an AI angle to digital out of home?
00:44:56 · Ari Paparo, Tim Rowe, Eric Franchi
[00:44:56] S1: Is is there an AI is there an AI angle to digital out of home? [00:45:00] S3: I would love to tell you yes. I think that there is probably from a planning and creative standpoint, and there's there's companies that are leaning in and solving for that. The tech for the industry writ large is just not there. We just don't have the infrastructure to do all of the fun exciting things I think that our imaginations can come up with. [00:45:20] S2: No. But you you raise a good point, Tim. If you think back to the Viant AI demo, you know, what they're doing is, you know, building media plans and optimizing media plans. And if digital out of home, if out of home is shown as a higher performing segment, as we intuitively think it might be for lots of brands, out of home benefits from the AI wave. Yes. So don't count it out. [00:45:42] S1: Someone should create Muzak using AI. You know, Muzak has to pay pretty hefty licensing fees, and the world... The Spotifys of the world are not willing to have AI based music for for a lot of reasons. But Muzak is a perfect use case for AI. No one cares if they understand the songs. They just wanna, like, be pleasantly soothed by the dulcet tones in the Wawa. So anyone wants to making music. My own music. [00:46:06] S3: Yeah. I've been doing that. I've been making AI music for myself. But you gotta type it into iWA. [00:46:11] S1: Speakers of your local Wawa, and then you make money. [00:46:13] S3: I'm just gonna stand outside with a boombox. [00:46:15] S1: Do you know how much [00:46:16] S3: money these are?
00:46:16 · Tim Rowe, Ari Paparo, Eric Franchi
[00:46:16] S3: money these are? [00:46:23] S1: Okay. I think I think we've beaten up... That was [00:46:25] S3: three Wawa plugs in one episode. This episode brought to you by Wawa. [00:46:30] S1: I have the the wrapper from CES, you know, which is very helpful. If I need a sandwich wrapped in my house, I got a Wawa so I can I can cosplay as a Wawa customer here? Are Wawa I was [00:46:44] S2: holding on. [00:46:44] S3: Tune the sandwiches to school with Wawa wrappers. [00:46:47] S2: Alright, Tim. This is awesome. Thank you, man. Anytime there's out of home to talk about, you're you're our guy. Ari, always a pleasure. Thanks for for putting up with all the all the bad jokes today. [00:46:58] S1: No. This was awesome. Tim, thanks thanks again for me as well. [00:47:02] S3: Absolutely. Thank you both. [00:47:03] S2: We'll see you again next week, everybody. Thank you for subscribing to Marketecture. New interviews are added every week at marketecture.tv in your favorite podcasting app.