Google Is Going Postal In Sweden

An anonymous reader writes "Google will start to collaborate with the Swedish Postal Service (Swedish original) to sell direct marketing to small businesses, both in the form of fliers (delivered by the Swedish Postal Service) and keyword advertising in Google Search. The area of distribution for the fliers is selected in Google Maps. Google will also will provide templates for the design of the fliers.The idea was concieved within the Swedish Postal Service."

Huh, Google getting help?

[cappp]

Completely opposite to what I expected. Seems the Postal Service is helping Google reach out to businesses to increase their use of keyword searches rather than Google helping a struggling Postal system - at least that's what the end of the article seems to suggest. Perhaps a testbed for a new business model?

Direct mail is a familiar medium to small businesses. Buying the keywords you are less familiar with. – Many people are interested in an online presence, but there are only a few percent of Sweden's 500 000 small businesses that use keywords in their marketing, says Google's Country Manager Sweden Stina Honkamaa.

Please not more fliers... please!

[Jeeeb]

I _HATE_ getting fliers jammed into my letter box. I feel almost as violated as when I get marketing calls. What gives them the right to use my property like that and disturb me in my home? Not only that it's a blatant waste of resources, and I have to go to the effort of putting them in the paper recycling.

Real-world spam is evil.

[slasho81]

What about do no evil? Junk mail is very evil.

Re:That's all we need

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it should be the other way around: register if you want ads.

I can hear the gnashing and wailing from the marketers already, but they can go hang :)

Re:Huh, Google getting help?

[tomhudson]

Even with "only a few percent" buying keywods, the on-line ad market is already saturated. More businesses buying google ads isn't going to increase the ads effectiveness - quite the contrary, it dilutes the product. The ONLY benefactor is google.

Think of it in relation to another medium - TV - there are more ads now, in part because ads were split into segments as short as 15 seconds - so that allowed overall ad revenue to increase, while individual ads are now less effective.

Or compare it to junk mail - I now get so much that it ALL goes straight into the recycling bin (though I *do* keep the plastic bags they come in to use when walking my dogs).

Once any advertising medium carries more than a certain prcentage of ads, people resort to all sorts of tactics to become "ad-blind". With TV ad radio, it's channel-surfing. With junk mail, it's the recycling bin. With online ads, eye-tracking studies show people never even look at those parts of the page any more (and this doesn't count ad-block, etc).

"Great"

[Daerath]

Just what the world needs. More paper-based junkmail. Google is starting to look like Obama

Re:Don't be evil?

[tomhudson]

Google's problem is that they need "fresh meat" to make up for all those businesses that used adwords, found they weren't effective, and dropped them.

Twice a week I get a bundle of junk mail (fliers, etc) in a large plastic bag. Twice a week, it goes, unread, into the recycling bin (except for the plastic bags, which I use to "stoop and scoop"). There's TOO MUCH advertising for me to bother wasting my time reading it.

It's the same with on-line advertising. There's TOO MUCH, so it all gets ignored.

It's the same with failbook and twatter. The volume of crap ruins the product as an effective way to convey a message, whether it's online or in my mailbox.

Re:Editors

[Anonymous Coward]

I cannot concieve that happening.