Death to Adwords..whats next?

I was chatting with a friend today thats in the early stages of startup. Though his company's original idea was totally not focused on this he was asking me about ad networks because he was interested in building one for his product. Seems like everyone is starting to see the value here even though King Google is current reigning champ in this space.
Google revolutionized the online advertisement model with its Adwords product. Before they came around online advertising was difficult to quantify, track and monetize on. Advertisers could approach individual publishers and purchase/place their adds on their site based on relevant content. With millions of sites and probably an equal number of advertisers this became a networking nightmare let alone the fact that most publishers ( independent ones specifically) do not want to deal with advertisers.
Publishers want to do what the do best.. produce content. Their job is to bring traffic through the site and having advertisements put some money in their pockets. This is why Adwords was a gold mine. Now advertisers can create campaigns for their ads and produce a different classes of adds to be displayed. The adwords dashboard shows you a whole slew of statistics so that you can customize your campaign to your needs and ensure that its as efficient as possible.
For a long time this worked well, publishers started adding adwords advertisement to their site to drive some revenue and advertisers where able to ensure their adds where being targeted to a specific demographic based on the content of the publishers site. Now we are starting to see this model abused by the creator itself.
Dell and google got into bed together a while back and came up with a VERY interesting way to exploit adwords. By "cybersquatting" dell comps would reroute miss spelled URLs through a Adwords service to display to the user advertisements. No more 404 pages, a utility detected this error page and sent off a query to google. HELLO! How many dells are out there doing this?

The screenshot below shows what the Dell-branded Google search results page looks like when you make a typo in your address bar. You can’t even see the search results in the picture (800×600 resolution) because the entire top of the page and right side are plastered with ads.

This page isn’t being shown to Dell owners just because they have the Google Toolbar. In fact, uninstalling the Google Toolbar won’t get rid of it. Dell and Google are now installing a second program on computers that intercepts all sorts of queries that the browser would normally try to resolve. This program has no clear name and is very hard to uninstall. In some circles, people would call this spyware.

So the funny thing about adwords and their success is that its actually fairly difficult to compare them to how effective banner ads were prior to Adwords. I mean undoubtedly they are better but taking into account things like this Dell/Google issue and presumably countless others how much is Google really milking it?

My Story - Part II ( Park Tours Inc)

Near the end of my tenure at UCSD I started working on websites. Pretty much entirely front end development, no web services , nothing complicated. Though it made me some dough, which is EXTREMELY appreciated when you are a poor college student, I learned quickly that i HATE front end development.

Its not that i wasn't good at it ( not that i was exceptionally great either) , it's just that I'm not an innately creative person which in my opinion makes it difficult to design a website. For the most part the gigs I landed either already had a site that needed some modification or had a good idea what the needed and how they wanted it to look.

During my last year at UCSD I stumbled upon a lady that work on websites as well but more on the up front design side rather than the actual implementation. We quickly became a great tandem since she was able to mock up wire diagrams and story board sites while i could focus on literally translating the mock ups into an actual site.

After quickly proving my worth she introduced me Rob Baronowski founder of Park Tours. This small start up located out in Rancho Penasquitos quickly became my new home and I eventually started working there full time as i attend UCSD part time finishing of my minor.

Bright eyed and bushy tailed I completely bought into the Kool-Aid. Park Tours idea was basically providing location based information for enclosed venues as well as a navigation and scheduling component. Walking around a place like the San Diego Zoo can get quite tiring if you dont know where you are going or in what order.

Venues like the Zoo has TONS of information online about each exhibit ranging from videos and audio clips to an infinite amount of research but none of it is accessible to the park goer while they are AT the park. They are limited to the information thats on the little sign that you can almost never see properly and is sometimes quite outdated. Past that you have shows and attractions that a venue may provide and all of a sudden making the best use of your time becomes a serious challenge.

Kids want to see the polar bears and make it to the elphant feeding. Parents want to make sure they dont miss out on the tram tour but have no idea when the best time to go and stand in line. Its literally a scheduling nightmare and most people just make their best effort to see and do what they can while they are there and usually leave the park having wished they had more time!!

The park tours app provided all of the above for its park goers. Using some slick triangulation with towers we were able to show you on a digital map where you where and routes to selected locations. You could even choose all the attractions and shows you wanted to see and let the reservation engine plan and plot out your whole trip taking into count things like:

- walking distance
- location crowds ( long lines )
- show times

Providing a system for the park to use themselves to enable a reservation system for shows and help do load balancing for crowds this product was a great idea in my opinion. I think in the end it was too early for its time and lacked proper funding to really make it out the door properly. Disney has a similar concept with its Pal Mickey.

Either way this was where it all began for me. The team was small and there was a ton of work to be done. Back then i didnt worry myself with much about the product and the decisions the company made...mad if i could go back with what i know now... :) Hopefully one day they will be able to surface the product back up and get properly funded. I think a location aware system can be exteremely valuable for any enclosed venue and if these guys dont do it im sure some one else will...

My story - Part I (UCSD)

I have had quite an interesting ride I think at least for me personally its been one. I moved down to San Diego back in 97 to attend to UCSD. I was one of those kids that knew from the start that i wanted to be a "software engineer".

Seems like it would be almost a no brainer these days to choose such a profession but let me tell you I had a little bit of an uphill battle to convince the rents that my desired career could actually be lucrative. Back then desis were either doctor or a lawyer for the most part. I still remember my pops telling me " I don't want you to go through college only to get out and find trouble getting a good job and then blame us". Blame them? LOL why would I blame them?? But i guess i can see their point of view since they didnt quite see the boom we had just entered.

After allot of convincing and some reassurance from their friends they finally caved in and let me pursue of been a programmer ( back then i think i had very short sighted goals... i mean dream of being a coder... come on!!!). I attended UCSD in the fall of 97 and spent 5 years there obtaining my BS in CSE and a minor in management science.

Of all my classes at UCSD related to CS i think compilers was sadly my favorite. Basically you spend 2 quarters living in the lab working all hours of the night building a compiler with a team member. Pretty much the CS equivalent of doing a residency without the blood...or the paycheck for that matter. Looking back now i think the reason why i enjoyed it so much was because of the challenge. So much work to do, so little time and a damn interesting product. This is undoubtedly why i have a fondness for startups.